Austin attended Yale University, where he swam for coach Phil Moriarty's Yale Bulldogs swimming and diving team in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and Ivy League competition from 1962 to 1964. In August 1963, swimming with the New Haven Swim Club during a summer break, he came in second in the 100-meter freestyle with a time of 55.2 at the National AAU Outdoor Meet in Chicago.[1] In inter-collegiate National competition with the National Collegiate Athletic Association, he won the 50-yard freestyle in 1964 and helped Yale win the 4x100 yard free relay in both 1963 and 1964.[4] He graduated from Yale with his bachelor's degree in 1964. Austin donated his Olympic gold medal to his alma mater in 2006.[4]
In later years, he worked in the financial field, where he labored overseas for many years before coming back to America and taking a position as CFO for Cambridge, Massachusetts's Strategic Science and Technologies LLC, currently a biotechnology company.[4]
