Hedy Bienenfeld

Hedwig "Hedy" Bienenfeld, also known after marriage as Hedy Wertheimer (17 October 1907 – 24 September 1976) was an Austrian Olympic swimmer. She won a bronze medal in the 200m breaststroke at the 1927 European Aquatics Championships. She competed in the same discipline at the 1928 Summer Olympics. At the 1932 Maccabiah Games and 1935 Maccabiah Games in Mandatory Palestine, she won a combined five gold medals, one silver medal, and one bronze medal in swimming.

Biography Swimming career Hakoah Vienna swimmers Fritzi Löwy, Hedy Bienenfeld, and Idy Kohn (1927).

Bienenfeld was Jewish, and competed for the Jewish sports club Hakoah Vienna, which had been founded in 1909 in response to the "Aryan clause" that banned Jews from joining other sports clubs. She won nearly every Austrian national breaststroke title in the 1920s–1930s.

Bienenfeld won a bronze medal in the 200 m breaststroke at the 1927 European Aquatics Championships in Italy, at 19 years of age.

She competed in the women's 200 m breaststroke at the 1928 Summer Olympics at 20 years of age, and came in 13th.

On 28 April 1929, Bienenfeld established the world 500m breaststroke record, at nine minutes.

In 1930, she married her swimming coach, Zsigo Wertheimer (1897–1965).

At the 1935 Maccabiah Games in Mandatory Palestine she won gold medals in the 200m breaststroke and 4x100m freestyle. They then moved to London on 31 December 1940, and then to the United States.