PHOENIX — Hopi long-distance runner Louis Tewanima, believed to be the first Arizonan to win an Olympic medal, has been posthumously inducted into the Arizona Runners Hall of Fame, KJZZ reported.
Tewanima won a silver medal in the 10,000 meters at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, the same year Arizona became a state. His time set a U.S. record that stood for more than half a century.
He was born around 1888 in the village of Shungopavi on Second Mesa in northern Arizona. As a young man, he was sent to the federally run Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1907, where he ran track alongside Jim Thorpe. Before his 1912 medal, he qualified for the 1908 Olympics in London and finished ninth in the marathon.
“I was like, ‘Whoa, he’s our guy; he should be inducted,'” said Dr. Art Mollen, who founded the hall of fame in 2011 and started the Life Time Phoenix Half Marathon & 10K, Arizona’s longest-running road race. “And the Hopi, they basically have running in their DNA.”
Running is part of everyday recreational and ceremonial life in Hopi culture.
Tewanima joins inductees such as the late Pat Tillman and four-time Olympic gold medalist Jesse Owens, who once lived in Phoenix and helped Mollen launch his race in 1976.
“Jesse was at my first, you know, so why shouldn’t Louis be at the 51st?” Mollen said.
Sources: KJZZ. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author / Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
