Hal Prieste, America’s oldest Olympian and the oldest surviving Olympic medal winner in the world, died on April 19 at a nursing home in Camden, N.J. He was 104.
Prieste won the bronze medal in platform diving at the 1920 Games in Antwerp, Belgium. He went on to a career in show business; he was an original Keystone Kop, did a comedy act on Broadway and performed as an acrobat in the circus and as a figure skater in an ice show.
But perhaps his greatest fame was the result of his thievery. As a prank at the Antwerp Games, he shinned up a 15-foot flagpole to steal what might have been the first Olympic flag to display the five interlocked rings, symbolizing five continents.
After keeping the flag in a suitcase for 80 years, he returned it to the International Olympic Committee’s president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, at a ceremony at the Sydney Games in Australia last year.
”You can’t be selfish about these things,” he said. In turn, Samaranch presented him with a boxed commemorative Olympic medal. The hard-of-hearing penitent replied: ”What is it? Kleenex?”
Hal Haig Prieste was born in Fresno, Calif., on Nov. 23, 1896, the same year the modern Olympics began. His diving medal came with a third-place finish behind his teammate Clarence Pinkston and Erik Adlerz of Sweden.
”It was a very cold, damp day,” Prieste said in an interview last year with The Asbury Park Press of New Jersey. ”I remember there were two guys holding a bathrobe and I would wear it and they would call my name and say, ‘America,’ and I would take it off and go dive and then come back and put the bathrobe on.”
He was in last place after the three compulsory dives from a height of 16 feet. Then, at 32 feet, he said, things changed. ”They let you do whatever you wanted, he said. ”You could get more points by doing harder dives. I did the hardest because I wanted to get the most points.”
He believed that if he had done better on the compulsory dives, ”I probably would have won.”
He took the flag after the event, acting on a dare from a teammate, the Hawaiian swimmer and renowned surfer Duke Kahanamoku. In explaining his actions he said, ”It’s very pretty with lots of rings in it.”
After the Games, he returned to California and became one of the Keystone Kops, once appearing with Charlie Chaplin. He was essentially a stuntman.
”I did a lot of scenes in the water,” he said. ”I made a lot of movies where there was a lot of water.”
During this time, he traveled to Hawaii to win a national diving competition and work on his surfing and ukulele playing. He learned to ride giant surf boards standing on his hands.
He organized a traveling comedy show during the Depression and timed an appearance to coincide with the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. Calling himself the Original Originator, he then played vaudeville houses as a solo act, appearing at least once in a Broadway theater. He performed with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and skated in the Ice Follies.
He had no immediate survivors.
”To him, his whole life has been a comedy routine,” said Carolyn LaMaina, who acted as his chaperon in recent years. ”He danced with the girls and had himself a great time.”
At the Atlanta Olympics, the 100th anniversary of the modern games, Prieste was honored for being 100.
https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/28/sports/hal-prieste-america-s-oldest-olympian-dies-at-104.html
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