Recently we noted the death of American kayaker John Lysak, born August 16, 1914, who was, to the best of our knowledge, the oldest living Olympian when he died on January 8, 2020. As we have mentioned in the past, however, there are approximately 2000 Olympians, non-starters, and demonstration event competitors born between 1910 and 1930 for whom we have no confirmation on whether they are alive or deceased. In addition, there are 427 individuals who participated in the Games in 1928, 1932, and 1936 for whom we have no information on their date, or even year, of birth. Today we want to focus on a small subset of those 2000, the 62 who would be older than John Lysak if they were still alive. Only one, Zahir Shah Al-Zadah, who represented Afghanistan in field hockey at the 1936 Berlin Games, was born in 1910. Five more were non-starters, so to shorten the list just a little, we are going to look at the remaining 56 by year of birth.
It should be noted that discussing these individuals in no way represents any belief on the part of Oldest Olympians that these athletes are still alive; we simply cannot confirm that they are deceased. In fact, we find it highly unlikely that any Olympian who is between the age of 106 and 109 would have somehow escaped our attention completely. It remains, however, an important caveat and is always a possibility: language barriers, poor media coverage of older athletes, and desire for privacy from a generation when the Games were not as big as they are now all contribute to the chance that someone may have eluded our radar. In the past, several Olympic centenarians have reached that milestone with little public fanfare (including John Lyask), sometimes not being revealed until their death. We feel, therefore, that it is important to share this list to make our research methods a little more public and subject to scrutiny, perhaps solving a case or two along the way.
Dora Schönemann competed in two swimming events for Germany at the 1928 Summer Olympics.
|Egypt||Wrestling||August 12 1911|
Kenichi Furuya represented Japan in ice hockey at the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games.
|Kenichi Furuya||Japan||Ice hockey||November 8 1912|
|Luis Jacob||Peru||Basketball||August 13 1912|
|Osamu Kitamura||Japan||Rowing||June 29 1912|
|Tadashi Murakami||Japan||Athletics||October 7 1912|
|Hilda von Puttkammer||Brazil||Fencing||August 13 1912|
|Tadashi Shimijima||Japan||Rowing||October 8 1912|
|Noboru Tanaka||Japan||Field hockey||1912|
|Taro Teshima||Japan||Rowing||July 14 1912|
Tsugio Hasegawa represented Japan in figure skating at the 1936 Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games.
|Osamu Abe||Japan||Rowing||August 11 1913|
|Sayed Ali Atta||Afghanistan||Field hockey||August 25 1913|
|Juan de Giacomi||Argentina||Sport shooting||1913|
|Tsugio Hasegawa||Japan||Figure skating||June 18 1913|
|Albino de Jesus||Portugal||Sport shooting||August 13 1913|
|Ludovico Kempter||Argentina||Sailing||November 11 1913|
|Hiroyoshi Kubota||Japan||Athletics||April 29 1913|
|Daiji Kurauchi||Japan||Field hockey||1913|
|Pedro Landero||Philippines||Weightlifting||October 19 1913|
|Jaime Mendes||Portugal||Athletics||August 20 1913|
|Isamu Mita||Japan||Rowing||March 25 1913|
|Amin Mohamed||Egypt||Boxing||November 15 1913|
|Severino Moreira||Brazil||Sport shooting||September 29 1913|
|Zafar Ahmed Muhammad||Pakistan||Sport shooting||July 10 1913|
|Mie Muraoka||Japan||Athletics||March 23 1913|
|Takao Nakae||Japan||Basketball||April 30 1913|
|Chiyoto Nakano||Japan||Boxing||February 7 1913|
|Wanda Nowak||Austria||Athletics||January 16 1913|
|Dumitru Peteu||Romania||Bobsledding||October 19 1913|
|Abdul Rahim||Afghanistan||Athletics||February 11 1913|
|Hertha Rosmini||Austria||Alpine skiing||November 9 1913|
|Shusui Sekigawa||Japan||Rowing||May 13 1913|
|Chikara Shirasaka||Japan||Rowing||August 18 1913|
Toyoji Aihara represented Japan in two track events at the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
|Toyoyi Aihara||Japan||Athletics||January 7 1914|
|Ion Baboe||Romania||Athletics||April 12 1914|
|José Cazorla||Venezuela||Sport shooting||February 26 1914|
|Hugo García||Uruguay||Water polo||March 20 1914|
|Mitsue Ishizu||Japan||Athletics||April 16 1914|
|Josef Jelen||Czechoslovakia||Boxing||August 10 1914|
|Thea Kellner||Romania||Fencing||March 6 1914|
|Grete Lainer||Austria||Figure skating||June 20 1914|
|Masayasu Maeda||Japan||Basketball||March 10 1914|
|Gheorghe Man||Romania||Fencing||March 20 1914|
|Rosalvo Ramos||Brazil||Athletics||June 6 1914|
|Julio César Sagasta||Argentina||Equestrian||July 13 1914|
|Antônio Luiz dos Santos||Brazil||Swimming||July 16 1914|
|Kosei Tano||Japan||Water polo||January 22 1914|
|Paulo Tatto||Brazil||Swimming||April 12 1914|
|Anwar Tawfik||Egypt||Fencing||July 31 1914|
|Annie Villiger||Switzerland||Diving and swimming||April 4 1914|
|Zenjiro Watanabe||Japan||Figure skating||February 11 1914|
For our next entry, we will be looking into those Olympians who may still be alive and were born between John Lysak and the current oldest living Olympian, Félix Sienra. We hope that you will join us!