The Summer Olympics are here, and I love the way the Games often bring out the best in us. It can pluck someone from relative obscurity and transform their life. It did that for Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii’s first Olympian.
In August 1911 he was a few days from his 21st birthday. He had not ventured outside of Hawaii. He had never entered a swimming competition, and few knew who he was.
Less than 12 months later, he had won gold medals and met the king and queen of Sweden. The whole world knew who he was and loved him.
Let’s take a look at how that happened.
Father and son
If you had asked the average person on the streets of Honolulu about Duke Kahanamoku before August 1911, they might have said yes, they knew police sergeant Duke H. Kahanamoku.
His 20-year-old son, Duke P. Kahanamoku, was less visible, except in surfing and canoeing circles. But that changed on Aug. 12, 1911, when an Amateur Athletic Union, commonly called AAU, swim meet was held in Honolulu Harbor.
The meet took place in the warm salt water, near Piers 6 and 7 today.
The blue-ribbon event was the 100-yard straightaway sprint, with no turn. For comparison’s sake, the nearby Falls of Clyde (ship) is about 100 yards long.
Several strong contenders planned to enter, and Honolulu was abuzz with the possibility of a sub-60-second finish — a world record.
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported, “Duke had never participated in any sort of a swimming competition and contented himself with riding the surf in his native Honolulu.”
The race began, and the swimmers dived into the water. Kahanamoku took an early lead and never let it go. Lawrence Cunha, who could normally swim the distance in 61-63 seconds, at the end trailed Kahanamoku by over 30 feet. The crowd was ecstatic.
“No less than five stop watches caught Kahanamoku’s time as 55 and 2/5 seconds for the 100-yard race,” the Hawaiian Gazette wrote. It was his first swimming competition, and he had set a new world record!
“The 50-yard race was also an eye-opener,” the Gazette continued. “Duke was pressed for the first part of the race by Lawrence Cunha again, but, within twenty yards of the finish, the Waikiki boy shot out and won in the world record time of 24 and 1/5 seconds.”
The crowd gave Kahanamoku a standing ovation when he climbed out of the water.
Alarm clock or stopwatches?
Mainland AAU officials were less enthusiastic. Did the folks in Hawaii use alarm clocks or stopwatches to time the event, they wondered? The record would be unofficial until a more thorough analysis could be done.
“Now Duke Kahanamoku’s fame will travel through almost all parts of the world for the great work he did in the sprints last Saturday,” the Gazette predicted. “Duke is not well-known among the people of Honolulu, but is remembered by many tourists who have visited Hawaii and taken dip in the surf of Waikiki.”
But a check of the U.S. newspapers showed that no news of the world record appeared in mainland papers until one brief mention in a Los Angeles paper in December, four months later.
Unheard of
Otto Wahle, AAU president, was wary. “The fact that an absolutely unknown swimmer would swim 100 yards considerably faster than world champions was unheard of,” he said.
“Accordingly, this matter will be treated very carefully and with extreme caution before the 100-yard record is accepted.”
He urged Hawaii to send Kahanamoku to the mainland, intimating that if he did well in swimming events there, there would be little difficulty in getting his record recognized.
Olympic trials
The win qualified Kahanamoku for the Olympic tryouts on the mainland in February 1912. It was his first trip there. Along the way he received some coaching about how to make the turns in a pool.
Officials were eager to see whether Kahanamoku could duplicate his record times in Hawaii. He traveled to Pittsburgh for an AAU event but got a leg cramp in the cold water during the 220-yard swim and had to drop out.
Things turned around a week later in Chicago, where he won the 50-yard swim in 25.8 seconds and the 100-yard race in 57.4 seconds. They were not world records, but were nonetheless impressive times. What he had done in Honolulu Harbor was not a fluke.
James Sullivan of the AAU in New York said the August 1911 world record was probably correctly timed. Kahanamoku and another local boy, Vincent Genoves, who won several distance races, qualified for the Olympics in Stockholm.
The U.S. Olympic team boarded the steamer Finland for the trip to Sweden. It would double as their floating hotel for the duration of the games.
‘Venice of the North’
“Duke had a week to explore the beautiful city, spread out over 14 islands, and dubbed the ‘Venice of the North’ for its waterways, lakes and canals,” Kahanamoku biographer Sandy Hall wrote about Stockholm.
“He was entranced by everything he saw. He did not have to worry about not speaking the language — the well-organized and genial Swedes had planned for that. Each citizen who spoke a foreign language wore a lapel pin — ‘English’ or ‘Italian’ or ‘French.’”
Controversy
In the first heat of the 100-meter race (100 meters is about 109 yards), Kahanamoku set a new world record of 1 minute, 2.4 seconds. But a misunderstanding occurred, and he and three other swimmers missed the semifinals later the same day. The communication may have been lost in translation from Swedish to English.
The Americans protested, and other competitors said the end result would be without value if some of the top swimmers in the world could not participate.
An extra semifinal was held. The three Americans and one Italian were ready this time, and Kahanamoku and another competitor swam well and earned passage to the finals.
King Gustaf V, the queen, crown prince, princess and a throng of courtiers, diplomats and ambassadors were in the royal box to watch the finals of the 100-meter freestyle competition.
The starter’s pistol fired and the final began. Kahanamoku noticed at the halfway mark that he had a large lead and slowed to a leisurely pace. He won by 2 meters. His time: 1 minute, 3.6 seconds. He also won a silver medal as part of the U.S. 4×200-meter freestyle.
Most popular athlete in Stockholm
The Hawaiian Gazette wrote: “Duke Kahanamoku is the most popular Olympian in Stockholm.
“For several days, the people have gone wild over him and yesterday, Royalty itself welcomed the Hawaiian swimmer into the Royal box in the stadium, while the vast throng of more than ten thousand people cheered and yelled and gave him an ovation that he will remember as long as he lives.”
King Gustaf personally handed Kahanamoku his medals during the awards ceremony, and clasped his hand and congratulated him heartily.
Honolulu
On Oct. 12, 1912, Kahanamoku returned home aboard the Wilhelmina. The Honolulu Advertiser said thousands of islanders were waiting. Every steam whistle in the city blared in a bedlam of noise, the likes of which had not been heard before.
The Royal Hawaiian Band played “Aloha ‘Oe” and “Hawaii Pono‘i,” and tears came to Kahanamoku’s eyes in grateful recognition of Honolulu’s welcome.
“Duke was the first passenger ashore and cheer upon cheer broke loose from the crowd. The young world champion was carried on the shoulders of his waiting fellow Hui Nalu members,” the Advertiser said.
“Duke had been gone from home eight months. What had he missed the most? Poi, he told reporters. ‘We have plenty of that waiting for us,’ his Hui Nalu friends promised, ‘at a waiting luau in your honor.’”
More world records
Hank Hollingworth wrote in the Long Beach (Calif.) Independent that Kahanamoku was a complete unknown outside Hawaii at the 1912 Games in Stockholm, when he stunned the world with a new world record.
“He broke his own record in the 1920 Games at Antwerp, Belgium, and broke it again in Paris in 1924, where he had to settle for second behind the great Johnny Weissmuller.
“I was a kid at that time, and Duke was 34,” Weissmuller later recalled. “When two men break a record in one event, you know they both have something. Duke is the greatest.”
Over the course of his swimming career, Kahanamoku broke 29 world records.
Bob Sigall is the author of the five “The Companies We Keep” books. Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo.com or sign up for his free email newsletter at RearviewMirrorInsider.com.
