The Long and Short of It

I’ve written several posts about people who have achieved some pretty incredible feats.  Most of those accomplishments were things that you or I would never have had the ability to attempt, or even the time to train for.

Well, this post will detail what very well may be the most amazing world record ever set by one person.

Let me tell you about Shizo Kanakuri.

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Shizo was a native-born Japanese runner.  Like many dedicated athletes, he wasn’t known for giving up.  He trained in perfect weather and he trained in foul…and he trained hard.

So it was that he was able to qualify to be one of only two athletes to compete for Japan in the 1912 Olympics, which were held in Stockholm, Sweden.  In his qualifying run, he set a world record of 2 hours, 32 minutes, 45 seconds.  That wasn’t bad for 1911.

Heck, it’s not bad now.

It was unseasonably warm in Stockholm during the Olympics that year.  In the course of the marathon about half of the competitors overheated and had to drop out of the race.  One man, Portuguese runner Francisco Lázaro, even died as a result of competing in the oppressive heat.  Shizo was determined to finish the race.

An unfortunate chain of events was working against him though. 

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The trip to Stockholm from Japan had been rough and long.  It was a tough 18-day-long journey, first by ship, then by train on the Trans-Siberian Railway.  According to one account, he may have gotten sick after arriving in Sweden.  He was also reported to have had trouble with the local food.  It took a lot out of him and he had only five days to try to recover before his race.

After pushing himself to his limits during the marathon, Mr. Kanakuri felt he might pass out due to heat exhaustion.  About that time he happened upon a garden party being held by a wealthy resident.  The banker offered the athlete some orange juice and Kanakuri realized how really bad he felt and that he was risking his health by continuing the race.  He made the difficult decision to drop out of the race.

The Japanese athlete was filled with shame, feeling that he had disgraced his country and his ancestors.  He was so ashamed that he quietly slunk out of the country and back to Japan.

He snuck out so secretively that, after searching for him, the Swedish National Olympic Committee listed him as a missing person.

When he felt up to it, Shizo returned to training.  He bucked up his resolve and qualified for the Olympics in 1916 but the games were cancelled that year due to the onset of World War I.  He kept training hard and qualified again in 1920, when he placed 16^th in the event with a respectable time of 2 hours, 48 minutes, 45.5 seconds.  He qualified again in 1924 but failed to finish the race.

Shizo became a well-known figure in Japan’s nascent distance running community.  He established the Tokyo-Hakone Round-Trip College Ekiden Race, a relay race for college students that helped foster a love of distance running in the country, and led to him being crowned “The father of Japanese marathon”.  He is also known for helping establish the Hakone Ekiden relay marathon in 1920.  In 2004 the top prize in that race was named in his honor.

Yes, Mr. Kanakuri was good, but he wasn’t making any money at his chosen sport, and the Olympics at that time were only open to amateur athletes.  He made the difficult decision to retire from training at the elite level in his sport after his failure in the ’24 Olympics.

Shizo became a geography teacher, married, and the couple raised a family.

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Interestingly, despite competing openly in subsequent Olympic contests, the Swedish National Olympic Committee still listed Kanakuri as a missing person. 

In 1962, a Swedish journalist for SVT (basically the Swedish version of our PBS) discovered the story of Kanakuri at the 1916 Olympics and also that the missing runner was actually still alive.  He reported to his country’s Olympic Committee, which made a note of it in their records.

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In 1967, a group of Swedish businessmen were meeting to try to find a way to help raise money to send their country’s athletes to the 1968 Olympic Games, which were to be held in Mexico City.  Shizo’s name came up at the meeting, and a plan was hatched to get some free publicity for their cause.

Kanakuri was invited to Sweden to help celebrate the 55^th anniversary of the 1912 games.  When he arrived, Shizo was approached with the idea of finishing the race he had dropped out of…in 1912.

The aging Shizo did indeed cover the last 100 meters under his own power.

At the age of 76, Kanakuri was announced as the world record holder for the slowest marathon ever run, with an official time of 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes, 20.3 seconds. 

A microphone was held out for his comment.  He took the mike, thought for a moment, and said, “It was a long trip.  Along the way, I got married, had six children and 10 grandchildren.”

In 1983, Shizo passed away at the age of 92.  To this day, the former world record holder for the fastest marathon ever still holds the world record for the slowest marathon in history…the only person to have ever held both records.

Heck, I’ll bet he’s the only person who ever will.

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