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In the early 1920s, swimming had a wall that nobody could get through. It wasn’t made of brick. It was made of time: one minute. Nobody in the world had ever swum a hundred metres freestyle in under sixty seconds. The best swimmer on Earth, Duke Kahanamoku of Hawaii, had come within half a second. And then a tall, skinny eighteen-year-old from Chicago went through the wall as if it wasn’t there.
From Freidorf to Chicago
His name was Johnny Weissmuller. He was born on the second of June, 1904, in Freidorf, a village that was then in Austria-Hungary and is now part of the city of Timisoara in Romania. When he was about seven months old, his parents carried him through Ellis Island into America. The family settled in Chicago, and life was not easy.
Doctor’s orders
When Johnny was nine, he fell ill with polio. Polio was a frightening illness for children in those days. His doctor gave the family some simple advice: get the boy swimming. It would make him stronger. So Johnny started swimming, in pools and in the cold water of Lake Michigan, and he never really stopped.
Starting again
As a teenager he went to see a famous coach, Bill Bachrach of the Illinois Athletic Club. Bachrach watched him swim and saw something special in his long arms and easy kick, but also a lot of bad habits. So he did something brave. He made Johnny start again, almost from the beginning, and rebuilt his stroke piece by piece.
Johnny learned to ride high in the water, almost like a speedboat, with his head up and his arms reaching far forward. It looked unusual. It was very, very fast.
The Duke
The man he had to catch was a legend. Duke Kahanamoku was a Hawaiian swimmer and surfer who had won Olympic gold in 1912 and again in 1920. He was a hero to swimmers everywhere, including to young Johnny. In August 1920, at the Antwerp Olympics, the Duke set the world record at one minute and point four seconds. So close to the wall.
58.6 seconds
On the ninth of July, 1922, at a swimming meet in Alameda, California, Johnny Weissmuller swam a hundred metres freestyle in fifty-eight point six seconds. Not just under the minute, but well under it. He had broken the Duke’s record by almost two seconds. For the first time in history, someone had swum a hundred metres in less than one minute.
He was just eighteen. And he was only getting started. In 1924 he swam even faster, fifty-seven point four.
Paris 1924
That summer came the Olympic Games in Paris. In the hundred-metre freestyle final, Johnny lined up next to his hero, Duke Kahanamoku, and the Duke’s younger brother Sam. Johnny won gold. The Duke took silver, and Sam took bronze. The two men respected each other, and they stayed friends.
Johnny won three gold medals in Paris and two more in Amsterdam in 1928: five Olympic golds in all, and a bronze in water polo. He set sixty-seven world records and won fifty-two American national titles. And in his whole amateur career, he never lost a race. Not once.
Tarzan
Then Hollywood called. In 1932 Johnny Weissmuller played Tarzan for the first time, swinging through the jungle and swimming across rivers, and he became one of the most famous film stars of his time. He made twelve Tarzan films, and the long Tarzan yell he made famous is still recognised today.
He lived a long life, and he died in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1984, at seventy-nine. At his own request, as his coffin was lowered, a recording of his Tarzan yell was played three times.
Doctor’s orders, again
Think about where it began. A sick boy, a doctor, and a piece of simple advice. Some of the best things in a life start as a cure for something else: a doctor’s advice, a hard winter, a door that closed. Ask the older people in your family how they found the thing they loved. The answer is often a surprise.
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Sources: Wikipedia – Johnny Weissmuller; Wikipedia – World record progression 100 metres freestyle; Wikipedia – Duke Kahanamoku. Pictures: Johnny Weissmuller, 1922 (Bain News Service, Library of Congress, public domain) via Wikimedia Commons.