Full name Daniel O'Keeffe Sport Swimming Height 1.88 m Coach Ron Ballatore | National team Guam Strokes Butterfly Weight 88 kg Stroke Butterfly stroke | |
Born 3 August 1972 (age 44) ( 1972-08-03 ) Tumon, Guam College team University of California, Los Angeles (U.S.) | ||
Daniel O'Keeffe (born August 3, 1972) is a Guamanian former swimmer, who specialized in butterfly events. He is a two-time Olympian (2000 and 2004), and currently holds a Guamanian record in the 100-meter butterfly (55.05).
O'Keefe was also a former member of coach Ron Ballatore's UCLA Bruins swimming and diving team at the University of California, Los Angeles, before returning to Guam in 1995.
O'Keeffe made his official debut, as Guam's only swimmer, at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, where he competed in the men's 100 m butterfly. Swimming in heat two, he posted a lifetime best of 56.05 to take a fourth seed and forty-fifth overall by a hundredth of a second (0.01) behind Algeria's Mehdi Addadi.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, O'Keeffe qualified again for the 100 m butterfly, by receiving a Universality place from FINA, in an invitation time of 56.96. He challenged seven other swimmers on the second heat, including fellow two-time Olympians Conrad Francis of Sri Lanka and Nicholas Rees of the Bahamas. He edged out Aruba's Davy Bisslik to take a seventh spot by 0.46 of a second in 57.39. O'Keeffe failed to advance into the semifinals, as he placed fifty-fifth overall in the preliminaries.
O'Keeffe currently lives in Guam, where he works partly as a sports development officer for the Guam National Olympic Committee, and a president of the Greater Pacific Aquatics. His sister Garland O'Keeffe is also a head coach of the women's swimming team at the University of Iowa.