John Lysack was born on August 16, 1914 in the town of Bound Brook in New Jersey. At the age of four, he had to endure a big blow of fate. His mother died of the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918, becoming one of about 700,000 victims of the virus in the United States. Worldwide, from this disease in those years, according to various estimates, from 50 to 100 million people died.
The father of little John was left alone with four children - he still had the eldest son Stephen and two daughters. The head of the family was poor and decided to give the children in charge of relatives, but could not even find the money to pay them all for the trip. The sisters left for New York, and the Lysaki brothers remained in New Jersey in an orphanage. Two years later, they were sent to the city of Yonkers, which is located north of New York.
The older boys entertained themselves by constructing boats and floating on them along the Hudson River. Lysaki made their little ships from improvised materials, using even rivets for barrels. Soon the brothers noticed a local rowing club and took patronage over them. Lysaki began to train hard and gradually became local stars.
In those days, rowing was the most prestigious sport on the water. It was practiced by students of prestigious universities. Competitions on it became a big event in the USA, and American athletes dominated the Olympic Games, each time winning the medal standings. Lysaki, although they were good rowers, they could not stand the competition in this sport.
Meanwhile, a new type of rowing - kayaking and canoeing - was gradually gaining popularity in Europe and Canada. Demonstration competitions on it were already held at the Olympics in 1924, and a few years later it was decided to make them an official sport. The debut of a new type of rowing was supposed to take place in 1936 at the Games in Berlin.
In the United States, kayaking and canoeing were not yet widespread, and Lysaki switched to this sport. John, although he was younger than Stephen, matured earlier and paired up with Yonkers native James O'Rourke. Together, they won the right to represent the United States at the Olympics and compete in the 10,000-meter race among collapsible double canoes. Stephen, by the way, continued to do rowing and achieved success after World War II, winning gold and silver at the 1948 Olympics.
Lysak and O'Rourke sailed from New York to Hamburg and became the heroes of the scandal. Athletes broke equipment in the gym, including a rowing machine, and were forbidden to approach the room. As Lysak recalled many years later, he and his partner had only to maintain the form of transferring the medical ball to each other.
Having sailed to Hamburg, the rowers went by train to Berlin and managed to arrive a few hours before the opening ceremony. The capital of Germany struck Lysak with an abundance of people in uniform, flowers on the streets and hanging flags with Nazi symbols. A week after arrival, the rowers went to the start, but did not perform very well. Lysak and O'Rourke took seventh place, already at the beginning of the race having lost the chances of medals.
In anticipation of his competition, Lysak, in his own recollections, attended other competitions and became one of the spectators of the men's 100-meter race - the one in which the legendary Jesse Owens won the first of his four Olympic victories. Lysak claimed that he saw with his own eyes how German Chancellor Adolf Hitler then went down from his box to the participants of the race, but did not shake hands with the winner. Later, the rower returned with Owens home on the same ship and asked the athlete about this historical episode.
“I asked him what had happened. Owens said that his rude attitude did not upset him, because, being a black man, he faced this throughout his life and was just used to it, ”the athlete said in an interview with Mercury News in 2008.
Returning home, Lysak continued to row for some time and, together with his brother, became the champion of the country in the canoe-fours race in 1939. In parallel, John continued his studies at Springfield College in Massachusetts, where he met his wife June. Lysak managed to finish his studies before the Second World War and went to serve in the Marine Corps in the South Pacific. Then he had to end his sports career.
Returning to his homeland, Lysak settled in the Californian city of Fremont and took up painting business. This work almost made him disabled - once a man fell from a four-meter height onto a concrete road. The former athlete broke his legs and was forced to undergo rehabilitation for a whole year, but still he was able to learn to walk again.
Lysak worked for almost thirty years and retired at age 62. His hobby was a trip in a trailer with his wife. So they spent time until June passed away in 2001. Also, Lisak for a long time did not give up his passion for rowing, but left this difficult sport for the elderly when he was 88 years old.
Today, it is Lysak who is considered the oldest living participant in the Olympic Games. He had only one year and 361 days left to break the record of Walter Walsh - a documented record of the oldest Olympic athlete in history who did not live a few days before his 107th birthday. To date, in addition to Lysak, seven more participants of the 1936 Olympics, as well as six Olympians over the age of 100, are still alive.