Hawaii's First Olympic Champion

Duke Kahanamoku travelled to the 1912 Stockholm Olympics as an unheralded swimmer from the territory of Hawaii, having already set an unofficial world record in the 100 yards freestyle that American swimming officials initially refused to believe. In Stockholm he won the 100m freestyle final by more than a second over Australia's Cecil Healy, becoming Hawaii's first Olympic champion in any sport.

Kahanamoku would go on to compete at three more Olympics across the following decade, adding further gold and silver medals, but his influence on world sport extended well beyond his own swimming career. Travelling the world for exhibitions after Stockholm, he introduced surfing, a sport then barely known outside Hawaii, to audiences in mainland America and Australia, riding a traditional Hawaiian longboard on beaches that had never seen the sport before.

He is remembered today as much as the father of modern surfing as an Olympic swimming champion, a rare case of an athlete founding an entirely new global sport as a direct consequence of his fame in another one. A statue of Kahanamoku, arms outstretched, stands on Waikiki Beach in his honour.