In the early years of the 20th century,
the United States owned Olympic swimming.
Every Summer Games,
the best Americans proved way too strong
for their international rivals.
Stars like Duke Kahanamoku and Tarzan actor Johnny Weissmuller
were famous around the world.
How could a smaller nation,
without the tradition and the resources of the USA,
hope to compete against this sporting superpower?
That was the question facing the Japanese
in the early 1920s.
Japan did not even enter a team for the swimming events
at the Summer Games in Antwerp.
There were just two swimming pools in the whole of Japan.
And then...a little miracle.
At the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam,
a Japanese railway worker called Yoshiyuki Tsuruta
won the 200-metre breaststroke event.
It was only the second Olympic gold medal in Japanese history
and it had a quite extraordinary effect
on the sport's popularity back home.
They remained way behind the United States,
but it was a start.
And the Japanese were working on some new ideas.
They had been watching the Americans
and the way they achieved success.
They watched and they learned.
They thought, "These guys are good, but we can do better."
They started using underwater photography
to see just what was going on beneath the surface.
They were sports-science pioneers
and what they discovered would change the way people swam.
Technically, the accepted convention
was for the swimmer to be square-shouldered, to remain
sturdy in the water with as little roll as possible.
But the Japanese were not convinced.
They tested other methods
and found small but significant improvements.
Japanese swimmers were taught to roll their shoulders more,
to increase the length of their arm movement,
and to put more emphasis on their kicking -
freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke.
They revised it, they tested it, they coached it.
All of Japan started to get excited
about the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
As the Japanese team set sail from Tokyo in 1932,
there were 200,000 fans there to wave them off.
In LA, the first final was the 100m freestyle.
Gold for Yasuji Miyazaki.
Silver for Tatsugo Kawaishi.
USA in bronze.
The relay would tell the world a great deal
about the quality of Japanese swimming.
The Japanese four were out of the pool
before the USA had even finished the race.
The next day, the USA finally secured gold
in the 400m freestyle.
One last desperate surge by Buster Crabbe of the US, and
he just beats off Taris and sets a new Olympic record
of 4 minutes, 48 and four-tenths seconds.
Then Japan dominated the 100m backstroke -
gold, silver AND bronze.
The eyes of the crowd are on the American flash,
Adolph Kiefer, 18-year-old Chicago boy
and the world's fastest dorsal swimmer,
who puts Japan's aquatic supremacy to a crucial test,
who swept everything before them in 1932.
The final day of the Olympic Gala
saw another Japanese one-two in the 200m breaststroke
followed by gold and silver again in the 1,500m freestyle.
In four years, the Japanese had successfully turned
the Olympic results table on its head.
Eventually, the rest of the world
caught up with the Japanese.
They learned to race the proper way, the Japanese way.
A comfortable win for Australia.
Second place - Ford Konno, America.
And third - Nikitin, Russia.
As that great swim coach Salvador Dali once said,
"Only fools don't copy."