Pilin Tachakittiranan


Pilin Tachakittiranan is a Thai former swimmer, who specialized in freestyle and butterfly events. She is a two-time Olympian and a multiple-time age-group record holder in all freestyle distances. Regarded as Thailand's top female swimmer, she has won a total of five gold medals at the Southeast Asian Games.
Tachakittiranan made her first Thai team, as a 17-year-old teen, at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. There, she failed to advance into the succeeding round in any of her individual events, finishing forty-fifth in the 50 m freestyle, thirtieth in the 200 m freestyle, and thirty-ninth each in the 100 m freestyle and 400 m freestyle.
At the 2003 Southeast Asian Games in Hanoi, Vietnam, Tachakittiranan dominated the pool for Thailand by claiming a total of three gold medals in the 200, 400, and 800 m freestyle.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Tachakittiranan shortened her swimming program, focusing only on the 200 and 400 m freestyle. She posted FINA B-standard entry times of 2:06.19 and 4:21.67 from the SEA Games. On the second day of the Games, Tachakittiranan placed thirty-fourth overall in the 400 m freestyle. Swimming in heat one, she picked up a third seed by nearly two seconds behind winner Paola Duguet of Colombia in 4:23.62. In her second event, 200 m freestyle, Tachakittiranan ended her Olympic run with a thirty-fifth-place effort from the preliminaries. She posted a lifetime best of 2:05.29 to lead the first heat against Chinese Taipei's Yang Chin-Kuei and Kazakhstan's Yuliya Rissik.