Seeing a fourteen-year-old climb onto an Olympic podium is truly unsettling. It’s more like the feeling you get when you realize the rules of the world don’t quite apply the way you thot they did, rather than being unsettling in a bad way. Exams are a major concern for most children of that age. In front of billions of people, these individuals were taking home gold medals.
Olympic swimming has a long history of remarkable young athletes who made their names known without waiting to reach adulthood. A few of them had just begun their high school careers.
Looking back at the records, it’s difficult not to wonder if these swimsuits were simply early bloomers or if they were more uncommon athletes who came into the world already knowing exactly what they were meant for. A few of them were still in middle school.
According to official records, Donna de Varona is the youngest swimmer to ever compete in the Olympics. At the age of 13 years and 129 days, she competed for the United States in the relay heats at the 1960 Rome Games.
Although she didn’t receive a medal on that particular day, she returned in 1964 and won gold in the 400-meter individual medley, an event that wasn’t even offered at her first Games. She was named the world’s most exceptional female athlete by the Associated Press by the time she retired. She was still a teenager.
Ralph Flanagan was 13 years and 232 days old when he arrived at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Imagining a young boy competing in the men’s 1,500-meter freestyle, one of the most taxing swimming events, in front of a crowd during the Great Depression seems almost surreal.
He returned in 1936 and won silver in the 4×200-meter relay, but he did not receive a medal at those Games. His legacy was established before he was old enough to shave he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1978.
Perhaps the most astounding name on this list is Kyoko Iwasaki. The Japanese swimmer touched the wall first in the 200-meter breaststroke at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona at the age of 14 years and six days. Her birthday was six days ago.
the youngest swimmer to win a gold medal at the Olympics, a record that stood for many years. When you’re barely old enough to attend the world’s largest sporting event, maintaining composure requires a particular kind of mental architecture. Iwasaki possessed it. She became a swimming coach after retiring, which seems appropriate in some way.
At the 1988 Seoul Games, Krisztina Egerszegi broke that record by winning the 200-meter backstroke at the age of 14 years and 36 days. Not only did the Hungarian adolescent triumph, but she also shattered the world record that had been in place since Kusuo Kitamura’s gold medal at the 1932 Games.
Egerszegi went on to win five gold medals at the Olympics, making history as one of only four swimsuits to win the same event three times in a row. She should be mentioned alongside Dawn Fraser, Michael Phelps Katie Ledecky. Not bad for someone who entered that Seoul pool deck barely as a teenager.
The Japanese swimmer Kusuo Kitamura, who set the first record at the 1932 Games, was 14 years and 309 days old when he won gold in the 1,500-meter freestyle, a distance event that requires not only physical stamina but also the kind of strategic patience that most adults lack. He had a record for more than 50 years.
He rose thru the ranks of Japan’s bureaucracy after swimming, eventually retiring as the head of a department at the Ministry of Labor. One life, two careers.
All of them are notable for the lack of fanfare that accompanied their youth at the time. These tales were constructed around their speed rather than their age. The age was merely an incidental detail that only became noteworthy in hindsight. That probably contains a lesson about how we undervalue the potential of young people when no one thinks to stop them.
The window of time when lung capacity, fast-twitch muscle development sheer fearlessness all peak at the same time has always been rewarded by swimming. The window might show up sooner than anyone anticipates. Looking back, it appears that these eight swimsuits realized that much earlier than the rest of us.