American sprinter Peter Fick set the third and last of his 100m freestyle records in the pool at Yale University with a 56.4 that was precisely a second faster than the time in which the standard had stood to Johnny Weissmuller for a decade before the next American took on the mantle of pioneering pace-setter in the blue riband event. 

Weissmuller was, in fact, the fastest 100m man in a 50m pool all the way to 1947, while there were two reasons why ‘the favourite’ for the Berlin 1936 100 free title ended his career with no Olympic medals: 

1. Expectations were based on Fick’s defeat of Japanese opponents at a duel meet in 1935, but at a time when the difference between long-course (50m) and short-course (25m and sometime 25y and 33y) pools was not recognised and comparing performances swum in different conditions, in pools of different measures was a looking glass yet more murky than any prediction of outcome of ultimate races remains to his day.
2. A screamingly obvious case of Nazi manipulation of the result of an Olympic final in which Fink was supposed to have finished 6th 2.1sec behind the winner, Ferenc Csik, of Hungary. 

Our analysis and the life and times of Peter Fick follow: