Bookseller Created
Books About the Olympics
Send as gift
Add to Wish List
Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create account
Limited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayThe Three-Year Swim Club
The Untold Story of Maui's Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory
Narrator
Alex Chadwick
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn more
Length
14 hours 48 minutes
Language
English
The New York Times bestselling inspirational story of impoverished children who transformed themselves into world-class swimmers.
In 1937, a schoolteacher on the island of Maui challenged a group of poverty-stricken sugar plantation kids to swim upstream against the current of their circumstance. The goal? To become Olympians.
They faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The children were Japanese-American and were malnourished and barefoot. They had no pool; they trained in the filthy irrigation ditches that snaked down from the mountains into the sugarcane fields. Their future was in those same fields, working alongside their parents in virtual slavery, known not by their names but by numbered tags that hung around their necks. Their teacher, Soichi Sakamoto, was an ordinary man whose swimming ability didn't extend much beyond treading water.
In spite of everything, including the virulent anti-Japanese sentiment of the late 1930s, in their first year the children outraced Olympic athletes twice their size; in their second year, they were national and international champs, shattering American and world records and making headlines from L.A. to Nazi Germany. In their third year, they'd be declared the greatest swimmers in the world. But they'd also face their greatest obstacle: the dawning of a world war and the cancellation of the Games. Still, on the battlefield, they'd become the 20th century's most celebrated heroes, and in 1948, they'd have one last chance for Olympic glory.
They were the Three-Year Swim Club. This is their story.
Julie Checkoway is an author and documentary filmmaker. A graduate of Harvard, the Iowa Writers Workshop, and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts individual artist grant and a Yaddo fellowship. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salt Lake Tribune, and Huffington Post.
Featured in these playlists...
Audiobook details
Author:
Julie Checkoway
Narrator:
Alex Chadwick
ISBN:
9781619693838
Length:
14 hours 48 minutes
Language:
English
Publisher:
Hachette Audio
Publication date:
October 27, 2015
Edition:
Unabridged
PDF extra:
Available
Start gifting
Libro.fm for Business
Start a membership, get two free audiobooks