Richard William Duncan Pound was born in St. Catharines, Ont., on March 22, 1942 and raised in Ocean Falls, B.C.
He was a star swimmer with the McGill University Redmen from 1958 to 1962. He established school records in every freestyle event, winning three Canadian intercollegiate gold medals in both his sophomore and senior years.
He made the Dean's Honour List and earned a commerce degree from McGill in 1962, followed by a bachelor's degree from Sir George Williams University in 1963 and a law degree from McGill in 1967.
The 6-foot-2, 163-pound sprinter became the first Canadian to swim the 100-yard freestyle in under 50 seconds and the 100-metre free in under 56 seconds. He owned every freestyle record in Canada up to 110 yards. A Canadian butterfly champion in 1961 and a four-time national freestyle champion (1958, 1960, 1961, 1962), he competed for Canada at the 1959 Pan American Games in Chicago and the 1960 Rome Olympics, where he was a finalist in two events, finishing fourth in the 4x400-metre medley relay and sixth in the 100m freestyle. He also competed in the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia, capturing one gold medal, two silvers and a bronze.
Not only was he Canada's top freestyle sprinter in that era, he was also an outstanding intercollegiate squash racquets player, ranking nationally in both singles and doubles.
Pound became president of the Canadian Olympic Association in 1977, was invested as a member of the International Olympic Committee in 1978, went on to serve a lengthy term as vice-president of the IOC and was the inaugural chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency. In 2005, he was named among Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world for his relentless efforts to rid sport of performance-enhancing drugs.
A long-time Montreal-based lawyer specializing in tax litigation at the firm of Stikeman-Elliott, he also served for more than a decade as chair of the McGill Athletics Board, the University's Board of Governors and chancellor of McGill.
In 2001, Pound received the Lester B. Pearson award, presented by Canadian Intercollegiate Sport, to a distinguished Canadian citizen and former university athlete whose personal achievements exemplify the ideals and purposes of amateur sport. He was previously been inducted to the Canadian Aquatics Hall of Fame (1972), the Canadian Amateur Athletic Hall of Fame, the Quebec Swimming Federation Hall of Fame (1993) and the Quebec Sports Hall of Fame (2001).
