Sport: Swimmers at Miami

Swimming records are classified as to whether they are made over a long, short or 20-yd. course. There are swimming records for distances from 50 yd. up to a mile. There are records in yards and records in meters. There are world, national intercollegiate and association records, records for men, records for women. Each of the five swimming styles—free style, back stroke, breast stroke, medley and relay—has its own group of records. Because there are altogether 700 swimming records, hardly a swimming meet is held which does not break one. Accordingly, swimming enthusiasts were less than amazed when they read last week that 27 records had been broken by U. S. swimmers in a three-day meet in the Miami Biltmore Hotel’s luxurious pool at Coral Gables. More remarkable than the number of records was one of the swimmers who had made them, a 17-year-old Miami high-school boy named Ralph Flanagan. Of the 27 records Flanagan had made ten for distances from 300 yd. to 1,650 yd. His closest rival, famed Eleanor Holm Jarrett had made only six.

No newcomer to that small group of U. S. athletes for whom a stop watch is as conventional an accessory for public bathing as a pair of trunks, Flanagan last week was making what sportswriters call a “comeback” at an age when many of his contemporaries are barely learning how-to swim. Son of a retired Miami butcher, Ralph Flanagan was discovered in 1926 at a newsboys’ party, by Swimming Coach Steve Forsyth, who developed Katherine Rawls. By 1931, he had broken his first national record (1,650 yd. free style). He was on the Olympic team in 1932. In 1933, he won the 500-yd. national indoor free style championship against Seattle’s famed Jack Medica. At the outdoor meet that summer, he scored 16 points singlehanded. After that he deserted Coach Forsyth, sank into oblivion. He joined Coach Forsyth again this winter, trained faithfully for last week’s meet. Last week, after the Miami Biltmore meet, he flew to Nassau for the British Colonial meet, made news by breaking no records.