Malcolm Eadie Champion (10 November 1882 – 26 July 1939) was
New Zealand's first
Olympic gold medallist, and the first swimmer to represent New Zealand at an Olympic Games.[1] He won a gold medal in the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay at the
1912 Summer Olympics in
Stockholm,
Sweden as part of a combined team with
Australia, competing as Australasia.[2][3]
Background
Champion was born in 1882 in
Norfolk Island (now an
Australian territory but then a
British colony).[4] He moved to New Zealand as a teenager.[5] His mother, Sarah Clara Quintal, descended from the
Bounty mutineerMatthew Quintal. His father Captain William Nihill Champion was a sea captain who traded around the Pacific. Malcolm later worked on his father's ships and by the end of the 19th century was living in Auckland. He died on 26 July 1939 in Auckland, New Zealand.[6]
Titles
Between 1901 and 1914, Champion won thirty-two New Zealand national titles, at one point holding the titles for every distance between 220 yards (200 m) and one mile (1.6 km).[7] Champion was suspended at the end of 1902 by the national swimming association for failing to pay registration fees and was allowed to re-enter the sport in the southern summer of 1907–08. His suspension has often wrongly been called a life ban for professionalism. In 1911 he was the long-distance champion of
England on the
Thames. He had also represented Australasia at the
1911 Festival of Empire at
The Crystal Palace, an early forerunner to the
Commonwealth Games, where he pulled out of the mile race.
Olympics
Due to the financial difficulties faced by the New Zealand Olympic Committee, his swimming club had to fundraise for him and organize loans so he could travel to the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. At the Olympics, Champion carried the flag for the Australasian team. Champion was originally slated to compete in the 400 m and 1500 m freestyle events. He finished second in his 400 m heat behind
Harold Hardwick and before finishing fourth in his semi-final to be eliminated. In the 1500 m event, he placed second in both his heat and semifinal, before abandoning in the final after 600 m.
An ear infection to
Bill Longworth resulted in Champion being promoted to the 4 × 200 m freestyle relay team. In the final on 15 July, Champion swam the second leg, and started equal with the American swimmer after
Cecil Healy's first leg before building up a 10 m lead in his leg.
Les Boardman extended the lead to 15 m before
Harold Hardwick held off
Duke Kahanamoku to claim the gold medal in the world record time of 10:11.6. The final was the third time that a world record had been set in that event at the Stockholm games, the first two times occurring on 12 July with the
United States team swimming 10:26.4, only to be bettered later that day by the Australasian team who swam 10:14.0 (the United States team won the silver medal in the final).[8]
Honours
Champion was New Zealand's only Olympic gold medalist in swimming until 1996, when
Danyon Loader won in the 200 m and 400 m freestyle events at the
Atlanta Olympics.[9] In 1990 Champion became an inaugural inductee into the
New Zealand Sports Hall of Fame. In 2005 the winning relay team was inducted into the
Sport Australia Hall of Fame, making Champion the only non-Australian inductee.[10]
Like
Billy Savidan after him, he was for some years Custodian at Auckland's
Tepid Baths, and the walls of his office were adorned with sketches of ships by him.