Catherine Fox won two relay gold medals at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Primarily sprint freestyler, Fox also won relay gold medals at the 1998 World Championships (4x100 free), the 1997 Pan Pacific Championships (4x100 free), and the 1995 Pan American Games (4x200 free). She also won two bronze medals individually at the 1997 Pan Pacs, in the 100 freestyle and the 100 backstroke.
Fox swam in college at Stanford, where she won nine NCAA titles and was named an All-American 21 times. A native of Kansas City, she was named to the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame in 2006. Fox was of partly Vietnamese ancestry, as her father met her mother in Vietnam while he was a volunteer worker there from 1966-68.