Haroldo de Melo Lara (9 June 1934 – 4 January 2015) was an Olympic freestyle swimmer from Brazil, who participated in two Summer Olympics for his native country. At the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, he swam the 100-metre and the 4×200-metre freestyle, not reaching the finals. On September 1956, two weekends in a row, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Haroldo Lara broke and repeated the Brazilian record of 100-metre freestyle, with a time of 57.8 seconds. That was an Aram Boghossian's record since 1948. Haroldo Lara died on 6 January 2015, due to complications from a stroke.