{"id":591195,"date":"2024-08-05T23:26:17","date_gmt":"2024-08-06T06:26:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=591195"},"modified":"2024-08-05T23:47:34","modified_gmt":"2024-08-06T06:47:34","slug":"in-three-kings-todd-balf-tells-story-of-leading-lights-of-1924-paris-olympics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/in-three-kings-todd-balf-tells-story-of-leading-lights-of-1924-paris-olympics\/","title":{"rendered":"In \u2018Three Kings,\u2019 Todd Balf Tells Story of Leading Lights of 1924 Paris Olympics"},"content":{"rendered":"

In \u2018Three Kings,\u2019 Todd Balf Tells Story of Leading Lights of 1924 Paris Olympics<\/strong><\/p>\n

Todd Balf<\/strong> has visited the era between World Wars many times in his work. In looking for a new book project, the former senior editor of Outside magazine was drawn back there not just by the era\u2019s mystique but by the confluence of history and performance.<\/p>\n

The 1920s were an age where the question of how to cover distance in the water in the fastest and most efficient way remained very much open. In a larger world, separate schools of thought could attack the question in different manners.<\/p>\n

The 1924 Paris Olympics were a proving ground for three such schools of thought. From Hawaii, Duke Kahanamoku<\/strong> arrived, aged 33, with gold medals in the 100 free at the 1912 Stockholm and 1920 Antwerp Olympics. Just 20, Johnny Weissmuller<\/strong> was the upstart from Chicago\u2019s emerging program. And 17-year-old Katsuo Takaishi<\/strong> represented a completely unknown program, representing Japan.<\/p>\n

All had different methods of moving in the water. But they shared plenty in common, as Balf\u2019s book, Three Kings: Race, Class and the Barrier-Breaking Rivals who Launched the Modern Olympic Age,<\/em> describes. He teases out the similarities of how each pioneering swimmer moved in the world, the adversities they surmounted and the sacrifices they made to even get to Paris.<\/p>\n

Balf\u2019s fifth book adds a touch of the personal. He survived a bout of cancer and a spinal injury that led to partial paralysis, which led him back to swimming as a rehab method. That uncomfortable process of learning how to move in the water and how to incrementally improve brought into focus the unknown into which swimmers a century ago waded.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I connected on both an emotional level where I think you\u2019re trying to overcome something that is getting in the way of your enjoyment, your performance, your love of something,\u201d he said. \u201cBut also I kept thinking about certain innovations that were being made by some of those swimmers and them experimenting in the pool.\u201d<\/p>\n

Balf spoke to Swimming World<\/em> about his book, which is available for sale now online or at your local bookseller<\/a>. The interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.<\/p>\n

SW: You\u2019ve written extensively about sports in this era before. What is that draws you the early 20th century?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Balf<\/strong>: As a historian and a lover of sports, I grew up with great sports stories that influenced me as a kid, everything from John McPhee<\/strong> talking about Clark Graebner<\/strong> and Arthur Ashe<\/strong> and that great depiction of tennis<\/a>, but it was also about class and about race. I think that stuck in my head for a long, long time. I think I\u2019m sort of naturally inclined to look for those stories.<\/p>\n

With Major<\/em>, which was about cycling in the early part of the 20th century<\/a>, that was something that was right up my alley, because of the issues of race but also sports performance, which has always intrigued me. As an editor at Outside magazine and freelancer for the magazine, I often wrote about those sorts of things. So merging both the history and the breakthroughs or the attempts at breakthroughs, I think, is really what I\u2019m interested in.<\/p>\n

I kind of stumbled across the 1920s era of swimming. I definitely credit Bonnie Tsui\u2019s<\/strong> book, Why We Swim<\/a>. I personally got into swimming because of a rehab out of necessity and a pretty severe injury. And learning how to swim again also got me reading about swimming. Bonnie mentions in her book this pivotal race in Hawaii later in the 20s, and it brought together in my mind a lot of things that really interest me. Duke Kahanamoku was there at the end of his career and was actually retired at that point, and it was Johnny Weissmuller, who was in all his glory having just won the gold medal in Paris, and you had the Japanese contingent that was emerging and doing something that nobody really anticipated. So when I thought about those aspects, I was just drawn. And once I\u2019m drawn in, I\u2019m fully committed. So three years later, the book comes out.<\/p>\n

SW: You talk about the politics and the racial overlay of it all, and I wonder how you put into perspective someone like Duke Kahanamoku being a global superstar for the U.S. at a time when Hawaii wasn\u2019t even a state yet.<\/strong><\/p>\n

TB<\/strong>: It is remarkable when you think about the current state of athletics and what some of the sacrifices of Olympians are. Then you look at Duke\u2019s story, and when he traveled in 1912 to the mainland for the first time for the trials, he didn\u2019t get back home until eight months later. It gives you a sense of the sacrifice, not just physically but mentally. This is the first time that he had been on the mainland. His origin story, to live in an independent nation that was overthrown basically by U.S. business interests, really puts into perspective what he had to overcome. The education that he knew as a youngster was completely changed by the time that the U.S. had raised the flag over Hawaii and he became part of a second-class sort of system, where there were no opportunities for someone like himself, who dropped out of high school and was basically working on the beaches to get a little bit of money.<\/p>\n

And suddenly, he sets this world record that nobody can believe. I think the prejudice that he endured as a person with dark skin. Everything was centered in New York, essentially, and the records were kept there. The legislation about whether it was a legitimate record or not was determined there. It wasn\u2019t so simple as setting a record that blew the records apart at the time, but he had to then come to the mainland and prove it all over again. There was just disregard for everything Hawaiian.<\/p>\n