Derya Erke
Şadan Derya Erke is a Turkish former swimmer, who specialized in backstroke events. She is a two-time Olympian and a member of Istanbul Swimming Club. She previously held Turkish records in the 50, 100, and 200 m backstroke, until they were all broken by Hazal Sarikaya in 2012. Erke is also a graduate of Marmara University in Istanbul.
Erke made her first Turkish team, as a 16-year-old teen, at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. There, she failed to reach the semifinals in any of her individual events, finishing forty-second in the 100 m backstroke, and twenty-ninth in the 200 m backstroke.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Erke maintained her program on her second Olympic appearance, competing again in the 100 and 200 m backstroke. She posted FINA B-standard entry times of 1:04.28 and 2:19.11 from the European Championships in Madrid, Spain. In the 100 m backstroke, Erke challenged six other swimmers in heat two, including 14-year-olds Anastassiya Prilepa of Kazakhstan and Olga Gnedovskaya of Uzbekistan. She raced to third place and thirty-fourth overall by 0.23 of a second behind Thailand's Chonlathorn Vorathamrong with a time of 1:05.38. In the 200 m backstroke, Erke shared a twenty-first place tie with Italy's Alessia Filippi from the morning's preliminaries. Swimming in the same heat as her first, she posted a lifetime best of 2:17.29 to claim another third spot by a 3.22-second margin behind winner Evelyn Verrasztó of Hungary.
