INTERNATIONAL SWIMMING HALL OF FAME – USA
Ana Miragaya
T
he aim of this text is to review the history of the honor-able inclusion of our pioneering Olympic heroine in the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF).First of all, it is important to describe the historical and current context of ISHOF and what it represents for in-ternational swimming. After that, the author shares the documents and photos of Maria Lenk that are in her indi-vidual archive in the institution in focus, with respective interpretation.
To have one’s name registered or "immortalized" in the International Swimming Hall or Hall of Fame (ISHOF) rep-resents the ultimate achievement in world swimming for an athlete. It is a privilege and an honor to be selected and invited to join the selected group of the world’s greatest swimmers of all times celebrated by this institution. The impact of a tribute like this can be very relevant to sport
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development in a country as it arouses admiration and in-spires swimmers, especially women swimmers, in the case of Maria Lenk. It may also encourage many young sports-men and sportswosports-men, who see it as an example to be followed, promoting the development of swimming and sport in general.
Maria Lenk also dreamed of having her name included in ISHOF. So much so that it is true that she attended the in-auguration of this institution, according to the document presented later in the text. She did so much for Brazilian swimming, particularly for women's swimming, given the circumstances that existed in the Brazilian context between 1930 and 1942, conservative and very reticent to the par-ticipation of women in sports. Maria Lenk inspired many girls to challenge the conservatism that existed, as she had done, and to devote themselves to a career in swimming or in sport in general.
In the 12 years Maria Lenk developed her career as a high-performance swimmer, she did so in an amateur way, that is, she did not receive payment for what she did, ded-icating her time to swimming, but received support from her family, initially, and after that from institutions. After her retirement from the pools, she began working as a teacher and then as director of the School of Physical Edu-cation and Sports of UFRJ, facing prejudices that she won with courage, determination and elegance. In 1980 she re-turned to the pools as a master swimmer and only stopped in 2007, when she passed away.
In May 2019, I had the opportunity to visit ISHOF to re-search about the process Maria Lenk’s indication to become an honoree in files that might be available. On this visit I met the assistant executive director of ISHOF, Dr. Yvonne Schmid, who received visitors and researchers at ISHOF.
I identified myself as a Brazilian researcher and indicated
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that I was looking for files on Maria Lenk, for a book which was being developed. Our Olympic heroine had been hon-ored in 1988. Very kindly she led me to the hall area where there was a file with pictures of Maria Lenk.
There was also a display, protected with a layer of plastic, with several photos of Maria Lenk, which I share in the text of the chapter with some explanations.
Then Yvonne took me to a room where I could handle, on a large table, a folder that contained photos and documents that belonged to the small collection that ISHOF had of our great swimmer. As I was allowed to photograph them, I share some of these photos in this chapter. A few of them appear in Maria Lenk's last book, "Longevity and Sport", and must have been given by her to the ISHOF archive. There are also historical documents with some photos.
The documents found in Maria Lenk's ISHOF archive are let-ters she wrote to ISHOF officials, forms, letlet-ters exchanged between sports authorities at the time, and leaflets. I have chosen to arrange them all chronologically, from the very first ones, to clearly analyze the historical process that cul-minated in the first tribute to our famous heroine. Yes! There was later a second tribute!
The documents, which are in English, are presented be-low, preceded by an explanation and interpretation of the facts that appear in these records so that the reader can understand the context of the time and the degree of importance of the people involved. Since most of the cards are spaced in time, there was a need to resort to the context for the understanding of each one. It is ver-ified that the process of nominating an athlete to be-come part of ISHOF is sophisticated. In the case of Maria Lenk, it required about 15 years for her name to be inte-grated into the privileged board of honorees since her
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first indication in 1973, about 20 years after the creation of ISHOF. Brazil now has only Maria Lenk and Gustavo Borges, honored in 2012.
Maria Lenk had two brilliant international careers in swim-ming: as a high-performance swimmer (1930-1942) and as a master swimmer (1980-2007). Our world record holder was an excellent manager of her sports career, being priv-ileged with two honors in the International Swimming Hall of Fame (ISHOF), respectively, the first one in 1988 and the second one in 2008, a year after her death.
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