How Alick Wickham helped introduce freestyle swimming to the world

On an autumn morning in 1901, a 14-year-old boy named Alick Wickham dived right into a Sydney pool and swam a race that will change the course of sporting historical past.

Bronte Baths, a picturesque ocean pool hacked into sandstone cliffs, was internet hosting the Eastern Suburbs Swimming Carnival and Wickham was there competing in a 66-yard occasion.

But, not like at the moment, many swimming races had been a case of any stroke goes.

“There were all kinds of what we would now see as wacky, eccentric things going on in the pool,” Gary Osmond, a sports activities historian on the University of Queensland, tells ABC Radio National’s No One Saw It Coming.

“Let’s say there were eight swimmers in a race. Chances are you would have eight different strokes or certainly eight distinctive strokes.”

There may have been breaststroke, blended with a sidestroke, blended with the stroke du jour, the trudgen stroke (which additionally had variations).

Yet one stroke was conspicuously absent. No one was swimming the entrance crawl that we now name freestyle — the stroke that is arguably essentially the most prestigious and quickest on the planet of aggressive swimming.

“As common as it is today, it did not exist in competition prior to 1901,” Dr Osmond says.

But on that day at Bronte Baths, Wickham dived in and swam the stroke that grew to become generally known as freestyle. 

The story of Alick Wickham

Wickham was born within the Solomon Islands in 1886 and grew up round an space known as the Roviana Lagoon.

He was the son of Pinge Naru and Englishman Frank Wickham, who had been shipwrecked within the area and determined to settle there.

“[The Roviana Lagoon] is a very beautiful place. It has a lot of little islands and white, sandy beaches,” says Dorothy Wickham, a relative of the swimmer and the editor of the Melanesian News Network.

A youngster’s life there “is always about the sea”, she says.

“If [children] weren’t in school, then they would be spending most of their time in the sea.”

During his childhood, Wickham realized a swimming fashion known as the tapatapala, a crawling stroke which is like at the moment’s freestyle.

“We swim in the open ocean. So there are currents. And if you really have to swim against currents, the best way to swim … is what you call the freestyle now,” Dorothy Wickham says.

As a boy, Wickham was despatched from the Solomon Islands to Sydney, the place his older brother was residing.

And on this new, unfamiliar residence, he sought out the acquainted pastime of swimming. He would swim at Bronte Baths and determined to compete within the 1901 carnival there.

For that 66-yard occasion, Wickham swam his model of freestyle and gained, simply.

As one newspaper put it: “A South Sea Island boy named Wickham romped away with the race, winning by fully a dozen yards.”

According to Dr Osmond, this was the primary recorded time that what we now recognise because the freestyle swimming stroke was used throughout the complete size of a race.

He says some Australian aggressive swimmers had been experimenting with a crawl-like stroke right now.

This included one of many nation’s most distinguished swimmers of the period, Dick Cavill, who had used it, together with different strokes, to complete a race.

“But Wickham came along and showed the potential of the stroke. Both the speed and his naturally refined style,” Dr Osmond says.

“Other swimmers realised this is what they’d been looking for in their quest for speed.”

Rise to fame

Wickham began to achieve consideration, each due to his swimming and in addition due to the color of his pores and skin.

“Some of the terms used to describe Wickham in the press in the first couple of years were shocking,” Dr Osmond says.

This was when the newly federated Australia was a deeply racist place, with Wickham’s rise to fame coinciding with the introduction of the White Australia Policy.

The 1901 Immigration Restriction Act geared toward preserving Australia for white folks solely. And the 1901 Pacific Island Labourers Act meant that almost all of the Pacific Islanders residing in Australia confronted deportation.

“He did suffer racism in Australia, I think it must have been worse for him because he was mixed race … It wouldn’t have been an easy life,” Dorothy Wickham says.

But because the younger star achieved larger and larger sporting success, the racial language about him within the media dramatically modified.

“[Wickham] goes from being the n-word … to being ‘copper pelted’ [and] ‘bronzed’,” Dr Osmond explains.

“He goes from being at the front end of negative racial stereotypes to being praised as a Pacific Islander.”

In different phrases, success on the planet of sport shielded Wickham from among the racism that was commonplace on the time.

Going worldwide

Wickham went on to set various NSW and Australian swimming data.

In 1903, he gained a 50-yard world document (though Dr Osmond says “it’s an unofficial world record” and did not find yourself within the historical past books).

“So teammates at his club, including prominent swimmers, Olympic swimmers … started using his stroke,” Dr Osmond explains.

Around this time, Australian swimmer Dick Cavill went to England and swam the crawling stroke, introducing it to the UK.

The approach grew to become generally known as the Australian crawl and shortly gained consideration worldwide.

Before lengthy, it was nearly universally utilized in freestyle swimming competitions — the place swimmers can use any stroke — so it is used metonymically.

However, whereas Wickham performed a key position in popularising the stroke, there are even earlier experiences of it being proven to folks within the West.

“There’s quite a notable report from the 1840s, when two First Nations men from upper Canada travelled to England as part of a delegation … And they swam what we now know as the freestyle or crawl stroke,” Dr Osmond says.

“The press ridiculed it. They called it an ugly stroke, an octopus stroke … Because it wasn’t ‘elegant’. Breaststroke was seen as the model of elegance.”

The legacy

Wickham stored swimming for years and in addition grew to become a distinguished diver.

In 1918, he made a dive into Melbourne’s Yarra River in entrance of 70,000 onlookers from a top of 62 metres — attaining a world document.

It was fairly the plunge, with Wickham dropping consciousness and having to be pulled out of the water. He informed a newspaper he was confined to mattress for days after the bounce.

Wickham returned to the Solomon Islands in later life and handed away there in 1967, aged 81.

Today, his achievements are recognised within the Sport Australia Hall of Fame and the International Swimming Hall of Fame, which is predicated within the US.

But he is removed from a family title in Australia or all over the world.

As his relative, Dorothy Wickham feels an immense sense of delight.

“He has contributed a huge, huge part [to the sport] by bringing the freestyle swimming technique to the outside world and enabling people to have the joy of using this technique,” she says.

Each yr, on the Roviana Lagoon Festival, the signature occasion is the Alick Wickham Swim, the place individuals swim from the mainland to the spot the place he grew up.

For Dr Osmond, all of it goes again to that 1901 Bronte Baths race.

“[The race] turned the heads of Australian swimmers in the direction of the potential of this new stroke. It really did change swimming,” he says.

But he stresses that the race itself isn’t the complete story.

“One of the issues, though, is that [the race] gets simplified,” Dr Osmond says.

“It overlooks the much more complicated story that involves paying tribute to people throughout the Pacific, and indeed throughout the world, who were doing this stroke with no recognition.”