Three Kings: Race, Class, and the Barrier-Breaking Rivals Who Redefined Sports and Launched the Modern Olympic Age

by Todd Balf

Overview

For fans of The Boys in the Boat, and marking the 100th anniversary of the Paris Olympics, the never-before-told story of three athletes who defied the odds to usher in a golden age of sports

Even today, it’s considered one of the most thrilling races in Olympic history. The hundred-meter sprint final at the 1924 Paris Games, featuring three of the world’s fastest swimmers—American legends Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller, and Japanese upstart Katsuo Takaishi—had the cultural impact of other milestone moments in Olympic history: Jesse Owens’s podiums in Berlin and John Carlos’s raised, black-gloved fist in Mexico City. Never before had an Olympic swimming final prominently featured athletes of different races, and never had it been broadcast live. Across the globe, fans held their breath.

In less than a minute, an Olympic record would be shattered, and the three men would be scrutinized like few athletes before them. For the millions worldwide for whom swimming was a complete unknown, the trio did something few could imagine: moving faster through water than many could on land. As sportsmen, they were godlike heroes, embodying the hopes of those who called them their own, in the US and abroad. They personified strength and speed, and the glamour and innovation of the Roaring Twenties. But they also represented fraught assumptions about race and human performance. It was not only “East vs. West”—as newspapers in the 1920s described the competition with Japan—it was also brown versus white. Rich versus poor. New versus old. The race was about far more than swimming.

Each man was a trailblazer and a bona fide celebrity in an age when athletes typically weren’t famous. Kahanamoku was Hawaii’s first superstar, largely responsible for making the state the popular travel destination it is today. Weissmuller, a poor immigrant, put Chicago on the sports map and would make it big as Hollywood’s first Tarzan. Takaishi inspired Japan to compete on the world stage and helped turn its swimmers into Olympic powerhouses. He and Kahanamoku in particular shattered the myth of white superiority when it came to sports, putting the lie to the decade’s burgeoning eugenics movement.

Three Kings traces the careers and rivalries of these men and the epochal times they lived in. The 1920s were transformative, not just socially but for sports as well. For the first time, athletes of color were given a fair (though still not equal) chance, and competition wasn’t limited to the wealthy and privileged. Our modern-day conception of athleticism and competition—especially as it relates to the Olympics—traces back to this era and athletes like Kahanamoku, Weissmuller, and Takaishi, whose hard-won victories paved the way for all who followed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798874710309
Publisher:	Scribd, Inc
Publication date:	07/02/2024
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Todd Balf is a New York Times bestselling writer known for his ability to identify little-known people and events in the worlds of adventure and sports and bring their stories vividly to life. He is author of the critically acclaimed adventure sagas The Last River and The Darkest Jungle and the biography Major, about the pioneering Black bicycle racer Marshall "Major" Taylor. Balfʼs writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harperʼs, GQ, Outside, Runnerʼs World, and elsewhere. He is also the author of the Scribd Original Complications, a memoir about how illness reshaped his own life as an athlete.

Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward-winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019's Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.

Editorial Reviews

This is a page-turning, deeply immersive, wildly inspiring book whose impact goes far beyond sport. Todd Balf uncovers a lost golden age of swimming and brings it to brilliant and urgent life, illuminating it with his deep insight, empathy, and thrilling storytelling. A must-read.”

Daniel Coyle

This surprising, fascinating book shows the twentieth century taking its very imperfect shape through the competition between three men—one Hawaiian, one Japanese, the third a German Chicagoan—at one of the most basic human activities: swimming. Three Kings is a must-have for any sports-history shelf!”

Thomas Dyja

Todd Balf deftly recreates a time of bobbed cuts and race riots; of forgotten rivalries and shocking secrets; and of hostile forces swirling around three gifted athletes of opposing skin colors but identical in gold medal dreams. Balf has unearthed a treasure trove of new information, revealing stunning seeds of betrayal—and a riveting book.”

author of When the Game Was Ours and the first wom Jackie MacMullen

05/13/2024

Balf (The Last River) presents a vivid snapshot of competitive swimming in the 1920s through the stories of three star athletes (German American Johnny Weissmuller, native Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku, and Japan’s Katsuo Takaishi) and their performance in the men’s 100 meter freestyle at the 1924 Paris Olympic games. Foregrounding the complicated ethnic politics of the era, Balf notes that Weissmuller faced anti-German sentiment growing up in Chicago during WWI only to later be lauded by eugenicists for his “Adonis” physique. Kahanamoku, whose success in the 1912 and 1920 Olympics made him a celebrity in Hawaii, took a tortuous route to the Paris games, coming under fire for competing in a white-only pool during a qualifying race and for violating the rules of the Amateur Athletic Union by performing in a Hollywood film. Elsewhere, Balf discusses how Takaishi, despite finishing fifth in Paris (Weissmuller took gold and Kahanamoku silver), made a strong enough showing that he sparked “a revolution in Japan,” where he went on to lead a national swimming program that “in a mere eight years supplanted the U.S. as the world’s swimming powerhouse.” Balf provides a tense account of the climactic race, though his argument that his subjects “were forebearers to today’s modern athlete” goes underdeveloped. Still, this is worth dipping into. (July)

Publishers Weekly

A complex and beautifully researched history of three swimming titans. It gives us what’s often missing in the stories—character and heart.”

author of Why We Swim and American Chinatown Bonnie Tsui

Three Kings delivers everything I look for in a sports book—great writing, deep research, and a thrilling story that makes the reader cheer not just for the athletes but for humanity. An original and unforgettable work.”

author of King: A Life and Ali: A Life Jonathan Eig

Three Kings is a look back at a critical Olympic moment that has so much to say about the great struggles of our time. It tells the story of three heroic swimmers battling not just in the pool but also fighting racism, poverty, ostracism, life-threatening illness, and deep personal secrets—only to emerge victorious. This is a narrative about the triumph of the human spirit against all odds—about how ordinary men truly became kings.”

author of The New York Game: Baseball and the Kevin Baker

In this beautifully stitched and deeply human narrative, Todd Balf dives far beneath the surface of early Olympic glory and finds an entirely fresh story of celebrity, race, and nation-building in the fast lanes of a swimming pool.”

Jonathan Alter

Move over, Boys in the Boat. Here is a rollicking tale of three boys who didn’t need a boat to glide with grace and vigor across Olympic waters. Todd Balf’s nuanced cross-cultural study of vintage swim racing is powered by three titanic characters who fiercely competed at the genesis moment when the quest for aquatic speed was coalescing as an international sport.”

Hampton Sides

This surprising, fascinating book shows the twentieth century taking its very imperfect shape through the competition between three men—one Hawaiian, one Japanese, the third a German Chicagoan—at one of the most basic human activities: swimming. Three Kings is a must-have for any sports-history shelf!”

Thomas Deja

“Todd Balf has given us the true story of a fascinating, vanished sports world…It reads as fast and as beautifully as its heroes spin.”

Kevin Baker

2024-04-17
A sprawling, well-researched account of diverse proto-superstars who popularized swimming in the early 20th century.

Balf, author of The Darkest Jungle and The Last River, reconnected with swimming while recuperating from cancer, and his enthusiasm led him to “the origin stories of several of the best swimmers of that time—Americans Duke Kahanamoku and Johnny Weissmuller, and Japan’s Katsuo Takaishi.” The author chronicles the dramatic contests at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, meandering through multiple societies and a generous time frame. “Anything was possible in the record-setting age,” he writes, “and pools were where some of it happened.” Balf convincingly argues that the Jazz Age suited the “emergence of a sport that produced larger-than-life creatures who embodied innovation, physical perfection, and, above all, speed.” At the same time, due to debates regarding speed and technique, “the clash between white and nonwhite athletes was surprisingly prevalent.” The taciturn yet “quietly fierce” Kahanamoku serves as the narrative’s moral core. Startling early accomplishments made him a vessel for Hawaiian cultural fascination, as such athletes “were aware that their athleticism was prized, but not their heritage.” Meanwhile, “Chicago golden boy” Weissmuller was presented as a “great white hope,” even as he concealed his birth in Hungary. As Olympic teammates, “Weissmuller and Kahanamoku were increasingly characterized as championship prizefighters,” and they both performed impressively during the 1924 Games, while “Takaishi led his team to do what no Asian swimmers had done before: perform competitively at the Olympics.” Balf’s storytelling highlights the racist absurdities and media frenzies of the age, and he ably captures the urban details and antic competitive spirit. The detailed focus on individual sporting contests, and the evolution of crawls and strokes, may seem repetitive to readers without a prior interest in the mechanics of swimming.

A worthwhile re-creation of a fast-fading athletic epoch.

Kirkus Reviews