The Japanese who took 54 years to complete the Olympic marathon.

54 years marathon

The Japanese who took 54 years to complete the Olympic marathon.

Stockholm, July 14, 1912. Within the framework of the Olympic Games that took place in the Swedish capital is the day scheduled for the celebration of the toughest test of athletic competitions: the 42 kilometers and 195 meters of the marathon. The weather conditions do not help because the day is sunny and the temperature exceeds 30 degrees.

Many of the 69 participants were forced to leave and one of them, the Portuguese Francisco Lazaro suffered a heat stroke that made it necessary to transfer him to the hospital where he would die the next day. The rest of the runners were reaching the finish line, being the first of them the South African Kennedy McArthur, who won the gold medal with a time of 2 hours, 36 minutes and 54 seconds. The silver medal went to his compatriot Christopher Gitsham, who reached the finish line 58 seconds behind the winner, and bronze for the American Gaston Strobino, who stopped the clock in 2 hours, 38 minutes and 42 seconds.

As I said, the rest of the 69 participants, except for the Portuguese Lazaro and those who had been retiring along the route arrived at the stadium in the following minutes; all but one. The Japanese Shizo Kanakuri did not reach the finish line at any time nor was there news that he had retired. The days passed and nobody knew anything about the Japanese athlete, whose luck became a mystery that would not be clarified until years later.

After kilometer 20 of the Kanakuri test he suffered a fading and was helped by a family of local spectators who helped him and offered him to come into his house to take a drink to help him recover; The marathon was over for Kaniguri, who recovered his strength and rested but could not continue the test. However, our protagonist (who was one of only two Japanese representatives in the Games) felt such shame for not being able to finish the marathon that, without contacting the Japanese delegation or the Olympic authorities, decided to return secretly and by his own means to Japan.

When fifty years of the Games of Stockholm were fulfilled, the Swedish journalist Oscar Söderland decided to look for the track of Kanakuri and managed to locate the athlete in the Japanese city of Tamana. Kanakuri was then seventy-one years old.

It was still five years more until in 1967 the Swedish authorities invited Kaniguri to move to the country and finish the test he had left in 1912. It was as well as with seventy-seven years of age Shizo Kanakuri traveled the distance he had not been able to complete during the Games and crossed the finish line of the Olympic stadium in Stockholm. I had finished the marathon with a time of 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes and 20 seconds. A true and unbeatable record.