J. Scott LEARY

The 1904 Olympics were a year early for Scott Leary. In 1905, Leary became a pupil of Australian coach Syd Cavill, who taught him the Australian crawl. He was the first American to abandon the Trudgeon stroke for the revolutionary crawl and Leary dominated American sprinting with it in 1905 and 1906, before Charlie Daniels picked it up and regained his spot as America’s top swimmer. But on 18 July 1905, in Portland, Oregon, J. Scott Leary of San Francisco’s Olympic Club, made swimming history when he became the first person to swim 100 yards in 60 seconds, flat-even time for the classic sprint.