Unknown Chicago Tales by John R. Schmidt

Author:John R. Schmidt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

A WINNING CHICAGO ATHLETE

Chicago sports have long had the reputation for producing lovable losers. Johnny Weissmuller was different. He was a swimmer. And he never lost.

There always was controversy over where and when Johnny was born. Although he may have been born in Pennsylvania in any one of several different years, the best guess is that Johann Peter Weissmuller was born in the village of Freisdorf in what’s now Romania in 1904. Wherever he came from, Johnny spent a good chunk of his childhood in Chicago.

He grew up in the old German neighborhood near North Avenue and Larrabee Street. Johnny was a sickly kid, so the family doctor suggested he take up some sport to improve his health. He went out for the high jump at school and was rotten at it. Then the doctor told him to try swimming. That would make all the difference.

Johnny went to Lane Tech for a short time—it was close to his home on Sedgwick Street then—but dropped out. He drifted through a number of jobs. His big break came when he was fifteen and working as an elevator operator.

One day he appeared at the Illinois Athletic Club and asked to try out for the swim team. The coach told him to swim the length of the pool and back. Johnny’s style was unpolished and raw. But the coach saw that the kid had potential and agreed to work with him.

For the next year, Johnny trained religiously. One story says that he supplemented his routine at the club by swimming laps around Goose Island in the Chicago River. He also picked up some extra cash by boxing under an assumed name at North Side fight clubs. That lasted until another boxer knocked him out cold.

After that year of training, the club swim coach decided Johnny was ready for competition. He took the sixteen-year-old kid to the 1921 Amateur Athletic Union Championships in Minnesota. Though Johnny was only a rookie, he won every event he entered with ease. Over the next few years, each swim meet was the same thing—Weissmuller against the field. The field always came in second.

He set speed records, broke them, then broke them again. At the 1924 Olympics he won three gold medals and shared a bronze as a member of a water polo team. In the process, he outraced the legendary Duke Kahanamoku, recognized for years as the world’s greatest swimmer.

But that honor belonged to Johnny Weissmuller now. Back home, Johnny continued winning every competition he entered. He became one of the sports demigods of the Roaring Twenties, often mentioned in the same breath as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange and the rest. Bookies stopped taking bets on his races. The only action they’d accept was on how much time Johnny might shave off his latest world record.

He was at the Olympics again in 1928. Entering two freestyle events, Johnny claimed two more golds. By then he had won fifty-two amateur championships and set sixty-seven different records. He’d never been beaten in formal competition.

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