Melvin Monroe Stewart Jr. (born November 18, 1968) is an American
swimming promoter, former competition swimmer and world record-holder who won two gold medals and one bronze medal at the
1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. He is the co-founder and publisher of the swimming news website,
SwimSwam, and a producer-director of commercials through his company, Gold Medal Media.
Following Seoul, Stewart began dominating the event. At the
1987,
1989, and
1991 Pan Pacific Swimming Championships Stewart won gold in the 200-meter butterfly. At the
1991 World Championships in Perth, Stewart won gold in the 200-meter butterfly, and set the world record with a time of 1:55.69.
When Stewart did not qualify for the
1996 Summer Olympics at the
US Olympic Trials, he still attended the Olympic Games, this time as an analyst for
ABC instead of as a swimmer. After the 1996 Summer Olympics, Stewart hosted a season of a television show titled "American Outback" on
ESPN. He spent the next decade doing contract work writing
screenplays.[2]
In 2006, Stewart joined a team launching a new swimming news website through
USA Swimming named SwimNetwork.com. His focus was bringing people to the website and managing the flow of
traffic for the website.
Two years later, he began serving an ambassador to the United States Swimming Foundation, where one of his focuses since 2008 has been managing
alumni of the US national team.[8]
By 2010, Stewart was
blogging and hosting an interview show.[2] Not long after, USA Swimming shut SwimNetwork.com down, and Stewart started a new joint venture of his own.[8]
In 2011, Stewart and a team of co-founders, including his wife Tiffany, Braden Keith, Gary Hall Jr., Garrett McCaffrey, and Rich Roll, founded the swimming news website
SwimSwam. The website was launched on March 7, 2012, and a print magazine followed in 2016.[9][10]
Personal
Stewart and his wife Tiffany moved to
Austin, Texas in 2009. Previously, they had been living in California.[9] SwimSwam was headquartered in Austin in part because Stewart and his wife lived there.[10]