Heather Brand

Who is Heather Brand?

Heather Brand is a Zimbabwean swimmer, who specialised in freestyle and butterfly events. Brand had won a total of five medals, including three for the women's butterfly at the 2007 All-Africa Games in Algiers, Algeria. She also set five national records in the same category at the FINA World Championships.

Brand qualified for the women's 100 m butterfly at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, by breaking a Zimbabwean record and clearing a FINA B-standard entry time of 1:00.61 from the All-Africa Games. She challenged seven other swimmers on the third heat, including Hong Kong's Hannah Wilson, a varsity swimmer from the California Golden Bears at UC Berkeley. She rounded out the field to last place by 0.65 of a second behind Greece's Eirini Kavarnou, with a time of 1:01.39. Brand, however, failed to advance into the semifinals, as she placed forty-second out of 49 swimmers in the preliminary heats.

Brand is the former captain of the LSU swimming team and a graduate of wildlife management at the Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She is also a resident athlete of King Aquatic Club in Federal Way, Washington, where she trained with numerous world-class swimmers, including Margaret Hoelzer and Megan Jendrick of the United States, and Svetlana Karpeeva, an individual medley specialist from Russia.