Riding the Waves of History: Duke Kahanamoku, Hawaii’s First Olympian

Hidden Voices began as a collaboration with the Museum of the City of New York that was initiated to help City students learn about the countless individuals who are often “hidden” from traditional historical records. Each of the people highlighted in this series has made a positive impact on their communities while serving as outstanding examples of leadership, advocacy, and community service.

Today, in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month, we’re sharing the story of Duke Kahanamoku, a Native Hawaiian swimmer and surfer who overcame prejudice to become one of the most famous athletes in the world thanks to his Olympic success, his role in popularizing surfing internationally, and his lifelong dedication to sharing and preserving Hawaiian culture.

In April 1896, 280 amateur athletes from 13 countries gathered in Athens, Greece to compete in the first modern Olympics. The early Olympic movement struggled to gain momentum, but it helped spark the rise of amateur organized sports across the United States in the early twentieth century.

On the other side of the world around the same time, the formerly independent kingdom of Hawaii was undergoing immense political change: their last monarch, Queen Lili‘uokalani, had been overthrown by American businessmen with the backing of US Marines in 1893, and the islands were annexed as an American territory in 1898.

It was during this period of upheaval that future Hawaiian Olympian Duke Kahanamoku first learned to swim.

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Duke Paoa Kahinu Mokoe Hulikohola Kahanamoku was born on August 24, 1890, in Honolulu, Hawaii to a prominent family who were trusted advisors to the Kamehameha royal family. When Duke was young, his mother moved their family to Waikiki, in part to escape the unrest after the Queen was deposed.

As a teenager, Duke attended the Kamehameha School for Boys, a school created for Native Hawaiian students. There, students were banned from speaking Hawaiian and forced to speak English, adopt American customs, and leave much of their own culture and traditions behind.

Duke eventually left school before graduating, though, and began to spend nearly every free moment in the water, swimming, paddling, surfing, and fishing alongside other Hawaiian “watermen”—skilled ocean experts who spent their lives in and around the sea. For Native Hawaiians, the ocean was not just a place for recreation. It was tied to their culture, survival, and identity.

As the American businessmen and missionaries attempted to chip away at this culture, they also began to form their own athletic clubs like those that were starting to become popular on the mainland. They created organizations like the Outrigger Canoe Club, among others, that hosted swimming and rowing competitions which attracted tourists and local crowds alike.

However, many of these clubs were racially segregated, with membership limited to wealthy white businessmen and missionaries. Native Hawaiians were being excluded from the very sports and beaches that had been part of their culture for generations. In 1908, shut out from these whites-only clubs, Duke and his friends founded Hui Nalu, the “Club of the Waves.”

Unlike many clubs at the time, Hui Nalu welcomed people from different backgrounds. Together, its members surfed, swam, paddled, and helped revive surfing in Hawaii, which had long been of cultural importance but was in decline as a result of colonization.

After the creation of Hui Nalu, Duke became eligible to compete in Hawaii’s first competitive swim meet, held by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) in Honolulu in 1911. Though still relatively unknown in the swimming world, Duke was by then a practiced swimmer. He shattered American records, finishing the 100-yard freestyle in 55.4 seconds and the 50-yard freestyle in 24.2 seconds.

Despite proving himself in Hawaii, officials on the mainland doubted his times. They questioned whether someone from Hawaii could really swim that fast. They told him that in order to certify his record-breaking times, he would have to travel across the United States to compete against the country’s top swimmers at the Olympic trials in Philadelphia. With the help of his community, he raised the money for the trip and won again, despite having little practice swimming indoors. He had officially earned his spot on the team, and was headed to the 1912 Stockholm Olympics.

When he arrived in Sweden, some of the crowd did not think he should be competing for the United States, as Hawaii was still a territory at the time, often incorrectly referring to him as “foreign.” As the first Native Hawaiian athlete to compete on the US Olympic team, and one of very few athletes of color in Stockholm, Duke faced additional pressure not only to represent the United States, but also to honor Hawaii and the Hawaiian people.

He was nearly disqualified during the semi-final round due to a scheduling miscommunication among the American team that caused them to miss the event, but they were given a second chance and Duke once again swam it in the fastest time, setting a new world record in the process.

When it came time for the finals, Duke was quick to erase any doubts spectators may have had in him: he won the gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle and a silver in the 4x200-meter relay. His speed was credited to his unique “ Kahanamoku Kick”—a variation of the Australian crawl stroke which, in combination with his 6’ 1” stature and size 13 feet, allowed him to move through the pool faster than the field of better-known swimmers he was competing against. It was the first, but not the last, time he would call himself an Olympic champion, and the fastest sprinter in the world.

After the Olympics, Duke traveled back to the United States, where he is believed to have given some of the first surfing exhibitions ever to take place on the East Coast, in Atlantic City and Rockaway Beach in Queens.

Duke was expected to win big once again at the 1916 Olympics, but they were canceled after the outbreak of World War I. It would now be eight years instead of four before Duke could defend his title. During that time, he continued competing in other swimming competitions, while also getting involved in other sports in Hawaii. He competed in rowing events, joined water polo teams, popularized beach volleyball, and experimented with aquaplaning, an early form of waterskiing and wakeboarding. Around this time, he completed his legendary “Long Ride,” surfing a massive wave for what some estimated was more than a mile.

He traveled often, promoting Hawaiian culture and sport wherever he went. In Australia, his surfing demonstrations inspired a new generation of surfers, helping to introduce and popularize the sport internationally. It was these travels that earned him his reputation as the “father” of modern surfing. Unfortunately, Duke often encountered prejudice while traveling. He was denied service at restaurants, called racist names, and sometimes struggled to train because many pools and beaches were racially segregated.

The years during and after World War I presented additional personal challenges for Duke. His father died suddenly in 1917, and Duke took on more responsibility for helping support his family. Although Duke explored joining military aviation service during World War I, he became seriously ill, having caught the deadly flu strain that caused the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic. By the time he had recovered, the armistice had already occurred, and he never served overseas—though he was still unfairly attacked for remaining at home, and even successfully sued one of Hawaii’s newspapers for defamation after they harshly criticized him.

Duke also faced financial challenges because he was required to follow strict rules that barred him from earning any money from his sport in order to maintain his Olympic eligibility. He could not accept payment for exhibitions, endorse products, or even work as a swim or surf coach. The system favored wealthy athletes who could afford to train at the level Olympic competition required without pay. Conversely, Duke had to balance his preparation with other work to survive.

The amateur rules also caused problems as Duke moved to California in the 1920s to pursue a career in Hollywood. Movie studios were drawn to his athletic fame and strong screen presence. However, strict amateurism rules meant he couldn’t appear in films that featured swimming or water stunts without risking disqualification from future competition.

In addition, racial prejudice limited the kinds of characters nonwhite actors were allowed to play, and Duke was often cast as stereotyped “Native chiefs” rather than leading roles. Even so, he appeared in numerous films throughout the 1920s, though like many silent films from this era, several of them are either completely or partially lost.

Despite these challenges, Duke returned to Olympic competition in 1920 at the Antwerp Games. The journey there presented more obstacles, though: the conditions on the ship that was bringing the athletes to Belgium, the Princess Matoika, were very poor. It had just been used to transport the bodies of 1,800 American soldiers who had died in the war, and so the ship smelled of formaldehyde and was infested with rats. The athletes also lacked space or equipment to train.

The poor conditions sparked what became known as the “ Mutiny on the Matoika,” when 200 athletes—including Duke—signed a letter demanding better treatment and accommodations. This is considered one of the first times athletes collectively advocated for themselves, and their efforts led to improvements and reforms in the years to come.

The challenges did not end there: Duke was the fastest swimmer in the 100-meter freestyle finals, but after one swimmer claimed there had been a foul, officials required a redo. Luckily, during the second swim, he held onto his first-place finish and became the first person ever to win gold at this event at two consecutive Olympics. He also helped the relay team earn another gold medal.

By this time, Hawaii had become known for producing world-class swimmers, thanks in large part to Duke’s influence—in fact, the entire podium for the 100-meter race was made up of Hawaiian athletes. But as the next Olympic cycle approached, the landscape of competitive swimming was shifting. A new generation of athletes was emerging, and by 1924, Duke—now in his early thirties—faced questions about whether he would even try out for the upcoming Paris Olympics. If he did, he’d be facing his toughest competition yet: Johnny Weissmuller.

Weissmuller, who would later become popular for playing Tarzan, was a member of the Illinois Athletic Club in Chicago, which had a longtime rivalry against Hawaiian swimmers. He was younger than Duke and had been chipping away at each of his sprinting records. However, the two would not meet in competition for several years, until Duke decided he would, in fact, race in the Olympic trials.

The qualifying race was highly anticipated, as spectators gathered to see who the fastest man in the world really was. Weissmuller beat Kahanamoku—but just barely, only touching the wall six-tenths of a second before Duke. Both men had earned spots on the team, though Duke was only given a spot in one event—the 100-meter freestyle. Many Hawaiians suspected the coach—who was also Weissmuller’s coach in Chicago—of favoritism.

Nevertheless, Duke had once again proved his detractors wrong: his times were good enough that he was still considered a contender for a “three-peat” in the 100-meter, 12 years after he had first won gold. When the moment came in Paris, however, Weissmuller won the gold medal, while Duke earned silver. His brother Sam won bronze. Even in defeat, Duke showed grace and sportsmanship, and he and Weissmuller remained friends for the rest of their lives.

The year after the Paris Olympics, Duke made headlines again, not as the fastest man in the world, but as a real-life hero. When a boat capsized in rough surf near Corona del Mar, he paddled into the dangerous waves and used his surfboard to bring several people to safety. In total, he helped save eight lives, in what is now remembered as one of the earliest recorded uses of the modern surf rescue technique.

Despite his heroism, Duke was denied a Carnegie Medal for bravery. Officials claimed he was ineligible because Hawaii was not yet a state, even though white residents of Hawaii and Alaska had received the same honor under identical territorial status. Many believed racial prejudice, not a technicality, was the real reason for the denial.

After his eventual retirement from competitive swimming, Duke settled down: he married Nadine Alexander in 1940 and was elected to serve as Honolulu’s sheriff, a post he held for nearly thirty years. When Hawaii became the fiftieth state and the position of sheriff was eliminated, he was named Hawaii’s official greeter, welcoming tourists, politicians, actors, and more to the beaches that he called home. As one of Hawaii’s best-known public figures, Duke also used his influence to advocate for the protection of Hawaii’s coastline and environment as the tourism industry grew.

In the later years of his life, he became the elder statesman of the water sports he loved. He helped coach an undefeated team at the Outrigger Canoe Club, which had made an exception to allow him to join in 1917. Over time, he saw improvements to surfboard materials, from his hundred-pound redwood board to lightweight foam and fiberglass that allowed riders to create new styles and innovative tricks. Even pool attire changed, with new swimsuits made from synthetic materials that allowed athletes to move faster than was possible in the heavy wool bathing costumes of his day.

When Duke died of a heart attack on January 22, 1968, at age 77, he was one of the most beloved Hawaiians of all time. Today, he is remembered for far more than his Olympic medals. Before the Beach Boys or Gidget made surfing mainstream, Duke helped revive and spread the sport across the globe. In 1999, he was named Surfer of the Century by Surfer Magazine. At the 2020 Olympics, his dreams of surfing becoming an Olympic sport were finally fulfilled, and Carissa Moore, also a Native Hawaiian athlete, became the first woman to take home a gold medal in surfing—bringing Duke’s vision full circle.

Having challenged racial barriers in sports long before many better-known civil rights pioneers, Duke paved the way for future generations of athletes across all sports. His influence can even be said to extend to skateboarding and snowboarding, which both evolved from surfing. Statues, beaches, competitions, and schools now bear his name, but his greatest legacy remains the spirit he carried both in and out of the water: joy, generosity, and aloha.

Cover photo: Duke Kahanamoku Surfing in 1910 (left) accessed via PBS SoCal; Duke Kahanamoku Negatives (right) accessed via Digital Archives of Hawaii; Waikiki Beach and Rainbow (background) accessed via Pexels.