I’ve been thinking of starting to train for another marathon soon. I really enjoy the training and haven’t done it since we moved back to the US. So I decided to look for the slowest ever time to finish a marathon, so can at least beat that.
Didn’t take me too long. My man is the dearly departed Shizo Kanakuri. First understand that this was Japan’s first participation in the Olympics. And that they are a very proud nation for whom failure is really an option.
He was in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. During the Marathon, he felt faint due to the heat and decided to abandon the race. He stopped at a garden party at banker’s villa on the outskirts of Tureberg to drink orange juice, stayed a while to socialize and then too the train to his hotel. Later he sailed back home quietly, too ashamed to admit that he did not finish the race.
The Swedes being the Swedes mounted a huge manhunt for him for quite a while and then listed him as missing for over 50 years. Until this wily journalist found Shizo living a happy life in Tamana in southern Japan as a pensioned geography teacher.
But of course, there is a happy ending to this story. 76 year old Kanakuri returned to Stockholm in 1966 at the invitation of a businessmen’s committee, which is raising money to send the Swedish team to the 1968 Olympics. “It’s been a long race,” he said, “but then I got myself a wife, six children and 10 grandchildren during it, and that takes time, you know.”
He also stopped by the villa to meet Bengt Petre, the son of his original host to enjoy another glass of orange juice. The Petres showed him a Japanese scroll that Kanakuri had presented to them as a gesture of his gratitude to ask him about it. Kanakuri took one look at at and said “Oh, that is my customs form”.
His final time: 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 8 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds
