Delicious Inspired Ineptitude

BY JOHN HAGAN

FOR THE PAST FEW WEEKS OUR LIVES HAVE BEEN ENGULFED BY THE WORLD’S BIGGEST SPORTING EVENT - THE TOKYO OLYMPIC GAMES.

Thousands of participants from (nearly) every country under the sun congregated in Tokyo to strut their stuff. Millions of us sat transfixed and mesmerised in front of TV screens watching a bunch of finely trained human specimens strive for the ultimate victory and universal acclaim. But who says only the medal winners deserve our attention and approbation? Some of those who don’t get on the podium may be worthy of acknowledgment for their inspired fallibility, misplaced fortitude, bravado, deviousness, and perhaps even a smidgen of the real Olympic spirit. Amid the hype and hysteria of ‘citius, altius, fortius’, lurks the bizarre, the inept, and the downright funny.

WORST EVER TEAM?

Unable to display the customary skills required to be competitive in each of the event’s five disciplines (equestrian, fencing, shooting, swimming, cross country), the 1960 Rome Olympics was not a happy hunting ground for the Tunisian Pentathlon Team. It all began badly for the North Africans when the entire team fell off their horses in the opening equestrian event (someone unkindly suggested they had practiced on camels). This disaster however, heralded a groundbreaking Olympic statistic, since it was the first time a team had scored zero points in the equestrian section. Unfortunately things did not improve in the pistol event. The Tunisians were ordered off the range when their rather erratic ‘marksmanship’ was said to have endangered the judges. Alas, still no luck in the swimming - one participant nearly drowned, while another took twice as long as the winner to complete the course. Their ineptness continued in the fencing. As only one of the team possessed even rudimentary fencing skills, he was sent out to impersonate colleagues and compete in each of the three contests. Despite him wearing the mandatory face protection, the delicate ruse was uncovered and the miscreant disqualified. However, in the final event, the cross country run, the team performed strongly (relatively speaking) with the members all finishing - albeit at the rear of the field. And so, blessedly the pentathlon came to an end with the Tunisians trailing the winners by a spectacular 9000 points to record the lowest ever score for the event.

DELAYED ARRIVAL

The honour of taking the longest time to complete an Olympic marathon must go to Japan’s Shizo Kanakuri, who took nearly 55 years (actually 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes and 20.379 seconds) to finish the course. That’s an average speed of about 0.75km per year over

Shizo Kanakuri

the 42.2km distance. While Irish–American super athlete, Jim Thorpe, was breezing through the 1912 Stockholm pentathlon and decathlon events, Mr Kanakuri lined up with the other marathon competitors. After jogging a few miles and feeling somewhat dehydrated, Mr Kanakuri tottered over to a group of spectators in their front garden seeking to replenish his depleted fluid levels. Being a social person, one drink led to another, and eventually Mr Kanakuri decided it was fruitless to rejoin the race. He returned to the start, caught a train to the city and was soon on a boat to Japan. Back on his native soil, he got married, became a father, and later a grandfather. Still feeling somewhat unfulfilled as an Olympic athlete, and regretful about quitting the Stockholm event, (he had been listed as a ‘missing person’ in Sweden for half a century), he returned in 1966 to the villa where he had terminated his marathon effort almost 55 years previously, and went on to complete the rest of the scheduled marathon course.

MARATHON MACHINATIONS

Polin Belisle may not have been a quality athlete, but he was gold medal standard in the art of subterfuge. A long-time native of California, Belisle spent only a few of his early years in the tiny Central American republic of Belize. Despite this, and thanks to some slick talking, he convinced the Belize Olympic Committee of his marathon potential. He produced some questionable documentation relating to his performance in the Long Beach Marathon - a race he probably started, undoubtedly finished, but seemingly never actually ran. Chosen to represent Belize in the 1988 Seoul marathon, Belisle brought his adopted nation little glory, finishing last (98th) by quite a margin. Undeterred by this achievement, he again approached Belize in an attempt to secure a spot in the 1992 Barcelona Games, but was rebuffed. Smitten by the Olympic bug, and armed with a swag of fake results and a birth certificate in the name of ‘Apolinario Gomez’, Belisle eventually managed to secure marathon selection for Honduras. On arrival in Spain, he was (alas) recognised by some of his former Belize team mates, and promptly booted off the Honduran team. Persistent to the end, Gomez/ Belisle somehow managed to start in the Barcelona race. He tagged the leaders for the first two or three kilometres, and then disappeared never to compete again. Or did he?

SLOWLY OLY

Haiti is not a country whose athletes are renowned for garnering Olympic records, but Olmeus Charles proved a notable exception. At the Montreal Games in 1976, he ‘ran’ the worst ever time for the 10,000 metres taking

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just a tick over 42 minutes to complete his heat. He finished 14 minutes adrift of Carlos Lopes’ gold medal winning time, jogging the last six laps around the stadium on his own. While other competitors were soaking in the shower, the crowd, sensing that they were witnessing true greatness, erupted in deafening cheers as Oly eventually staggered over the finishing line. During the race, officials hotly debated whether he should be allowed to complete the full distance, however, much to the delight of the Montreal spectators, he was permitted to trudge on. As a consequence the entire track timetable for that day ran 14 minutes late. It was later discovered that ‘Slowly Oly’ was not in fact a well-honed, elite athlete at all. ‘Papa Doc’, the then-Dictator of Haiti, had rewarded him with an Olympic berth for being ‘a good office worker’.

ERIC THE EEL

“I want to send kisses and hugs to the crowd because it was their cheering that kept me going”. No, Eric Moussambani was not voicing his thanks on the winner’s dais during the 2004 Sydney Olympic Games. He had in fact taken a whopping 1 minute 52.72 seconds to complete the 100 metre freestyle swimming event – a time slower than it took Ian Thorpe to swim twice the distance. It was this unspectacularly stellar performance which catapulted the swimmer to fame. Eric had only learned to swim a mere nine months prior to the Games, doing the bulk of his training in a crocodile infested river in his tiny African homeland of Equatorial Guinea. Before arriving in Sydney he had never swum in a pool longer than 20 metres. Granted a ‘wildcard’ to compete, he was the only swimmer in his heat, the other two competitors, from Niger and Tajikistan, both flopped into the pool and were disqualified for false starts. Taking it out hard over the first 30 metres, Eric all but stalled coming home, prompting several officials to fling off their white hats and shirts in preparation for a rescue mission, but Eric eventually finished the heat unaided. Not to be outdone by her national colleague, Paula ‘The Crawler’ Barila Bolopa (another wildcard entry) had the distinction of clocking the slowest 50 metre freestyle in Olympic history. Interviewed later, Paula revealed “It’s the first time I’ve swum 50 metres. It was further than I thought”. The performance of the Equatorial Guinea duo caused FINA to rethink its ‘wildcard’ strategy. Left: Eric Moussambani. Below: J.W.H.T. Douglas

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

In 1908, having won his previous three fights in one day, Australia’s Snowy Baker encountered England’s J.W.H.T. Douglas in the final of the middleweight boxing division at the London Olympics. Away from pugilism, Douglas was infamous as a typical stodgy, stonewalling, English test batsman, whose initials were said to stand for ‘Johnny Won’t Hit Today’. In a dour bout, the judges were evenly divided as to the victor, so the final decision was left to the referee, who promptly raised the Englishman’s glove. Incensed, Baker accused the official of bias; an allegation which was duly rebuffed. The referee insisted his verdict was completely uninfluenced by the fact that he was Douglas’ father.

BUTTERFLY SPLUTTER

While the United States’ star swimmer Carolyn Schuler may have won the 100 metres butterfly gold medal in world record time, it was her team mate Carolyn Wood who claimed most of the attention. During the 1960 Rome Olympics, Miss Wood easily completed the event’s first 50 metres, but after the turn she disappeared beneath the water, resurfaced in a distressed state giving every indication that she might be the first swimmer to drown during Olympic competition. She eventually grabbed at the lane rope causing her coach to dive in fully clothed to rescue her and

Below: ‘Spyros’ Louis. Right: Volmari Iso-Hollo

administer resuscitation. When interviewed later, she explained to reporters that she “got a big mouthful of water and could not go on”.

CARRYING ON

Greek water-carrier Spiridon ‘Spyros’ Louis was very proud when he won the modern Olympiad’s first ever marathon in Athens in 1896. However, it is little wonder he covered the distance faster than anyone else given the inducements dangled before him. Greek millionaire Georges Averoff offered a million drachmas and his daughter’s hand in marriage to any of his fellow countrymen who could win this most demanding event. His not insubstantial largesse was further augmented by the generous offerings by other Athenians, including barrels of wine, chocolate, free haircuts, jewellery, meals and clothes. Fuelled by wine, milk, beer, an Easter egg and some orange juice, Spyros completed the course in two hours, 58 minutes and 50 seconds. Perhaps mindful of his amateur status, or maybe due to a well nurtured entrepreneurial streak, when asked by the King of Greece if there was anything he wanted, Spyros opted merely for a new horse and cart to assist in his water delivery business.

OOPS!

Finnish athlete Volmari Iso-Hollo was odds-on favourite to win the 3,000 metres steeplechase at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles. In fact, he was not only aiming to acquire a gold medal, but also to break the world record. He soon left the other athletes trailing in his wake and turned into the last lap in subworld record time. By a stroke of inspired idiocy, the official lap counter was somewhat engrossed in watching the nearby pole vault and failed to ring the bell to notify athletes of the final lap. The field just kept on running and although Iso-Hollo won, he took a whopping 10 minutes and 33.4 seconds to record the slowest ever time in the 3000 metre steeplechase – but then he had run an extra lap!

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