Summer Sanders

Summer Elizabeth Sanders (born October 13, 1972) is an American sports commentator, reporter, television personality, actress, former competition swimmer and Olympic champion from 1992.

Early life Sanders was born in Roseville, California, In her two-year collegiate swimming career, Sanders won eight NCAA National Championship titles, including the 200-yard butterfly, 200-yard individual medley and 400-yard individual medley and the 4x100-yard medley relay. She won back-to-back NCAA Swimmer of the Year titles and helped her Cardinal team win the 1992 NCAA National Championships. She was the recipient of the Honda Sports Award for Swimming and Diving, recognizing her as the outstanding college female swimmer of the year in 1991–92.

Sanders won three medals at the 1991 World Championships in Perth, Australia, taking gold in the 200-meter butterfly, silver in the 200-meter individual medley, and bronze in the 400-meter individual medley. She then became the first American woman since Hall of Famer Shirley Babashoff (1976) to qualify for four individual events at one Olympiad at the 1992 Olympic Trials.

At the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain, Sanders won four Olympic medals—gold in the 200-meter butterfly with a time of 2:08.67, gold in the 400-meter medley relay, silver in the 200-meter individual medley, and a bronze medal in the 400-meter individual medley.

Achievements 1992 Olympic Games: gold (200m butterfly), gold (4 × 100 m medley relay – preliminary heat), silver (200m IM), bronze (400m IM), 6th (100m butterfly) 1991 World Championships: gold (200m butterfly), silver (200m IM), bronze (400m IM) 8 United States National Championships: 2-100y butterfly, 2-200y butterfly, 1-200y IM, 2-400y IM, 1-200m IM 1991 Pan-Pacific Championships: gold (200m IM, 400m IM, 200m butterfly) 1989 Pan-Pacific Championships: silver (200m IM)

Television work Sanders began working on television while still competing. In 1992 and 1994 she was a commentator for CBS Sports for the NCAA Swimming Championships. In 1996, she was a commentator for NBC's coverage of swimming at the Atlanta Olympics. She acted as an Olympic analyst and host for NBC during the 1996, 2000, 2002 and 2010 Olympic Games, being a Today Show special contributor from 2000 to 2004 and contributed to the network's coverage of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City as an on-site reporter. She was also the host of Scholastic at the Olympic Games on MSNBC in 2000.

Sanders spent eight years co-hosting NBA Inside Stuff with Ahmad Rashad, being a sideline reporter for the WNBA (Lifetime, 1997–1999; NBC, 1999–2002) and a feature correspondent for NBA on NBC from 2000 to 2002. She covered tennis as a reporter for United States's coverage of the U.S. Open in 2000 and 2001, and was co-host of CBS' coverage of "Arthur Ashe Kid's Day" at the Open from 2000 to 2006.

Sanders has appeared in many programs as correspondent, co-host, and host. Highlights include Nickelodeon, who named her their "commissioner" for the Nick GAS channel in 1998, after being the first female host of a Nickelodeon game show, Figure It Out (1997–1999), Sanders also co-hosted the Fox celebrity reality series Skating With Celebrities in 2006.

In 2009, Sanders began hosting Inside Out with Summer Sanders. The show, which is the first original production of Universal Sports, debuted on December 23, 2009, and focuses on in-depth interviews and intimate profiles of notable Olympic athletes. She also worked as a general correspondent for Good Morning America and Rachael Ray.

She appeared on the third season of Celebrity Apprentice, and competed for charity. In January 2012, she was one of eight celebrities participating in the Food Network reality series Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off.

Sanders hosted the award-winning "Elite Athlete Workouts" on Yahoo!Sports and covered the 2012 Olympic Games in London for the news outlet. She currently works as a commentator on the new Pac-12 Network.

Her most recent work in TV is hosting the game show Keywords for HLN.

Other media Sanders has appeared as an actress in two films: Jerry Maguire (1996), in which she played herself, and Broken Record (1997).

In June 1999, she published the book Champions Are Raised, Not Born: How My Parents Made Me A Success.

Personal life On July 4, 1997, Sanders married Olympic swimmer Mark Henderson. The couple divorced in 2001. In July 2005, she married Erik Schlopy, a World Cup skier who competed at the 2006 Winter Olympics. Sanders and Schlopy have two children. She is a noted fan of the NFL's Buffalo Bills; her husband is a native Western New Yorker whose cousin Todd Schlopy briefly played for the Bills in 1987.

On June 9, 2007, Sanders' childhood home was destroyed by a fire.

On September 19, 2025, an Amicus Brief was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Sanders and other athletes in support of a West Virginia law that prohibits biologically male athletes from participating in what the filing described as women's sports.