Jacques François Resleure

Jacques François Resleure was born in Balmain, the son of a French bank clerk. At the age of 9, in August 1900, he lost his right leg in a tram accident on Harris Street, Ultimo and received a damages payout of £1000 in the following year. A few years later, he enrolled at Sydney High and became the school’s swimming champion. He completed the Junior university examination in 1908 and left in 1909. Many years later (in 1956) one of his classmates, Adrian Edmonds (SHS: 1904-1908) recalled Resleure’s school days:

There was a big chap in the class named Bull and a wag named Jimmy Resleure. A cow moo-ed out in Mary Ann Street (primitive Sydney) and Jimmy roared out, “Hey, Bull, your sister is calling you.” Jimmy Resleure, by the way, was a strapping fellow minus a leg and rode to school on a bike and used to win bike races at the school sports. He was also a phenomenal swimmer and swam at San Francisco and Berlin to my knowledge and was known as the one-legged wonder. He used his foot as a propeller and he had less body friction than the average person.

Resleure migrated to California in 1909 and, while studying there, trialled for the US Olympic swimming team in 1912. However, technical problems with his timing led to his exclusion.

He enrolled for a year at Cambridge University and, in 1914, he came first in three events at the Cambridge University Swimming Carnival. In one event, the 100 yards race, he set the University record. In an inter-university match against Oxford, later in the same month, he set another two records - this time for the quarter mile race as well as the 100 yards.

The Cambridge Magazine reported that his “dexterity on a bicycle” attracted “the astonishment of all who have occasion to make use of the streets of Cambridge” and added that his swimming success was making “two-legged members of the CUSC seriously consider the desirability of removing one or more of their superfluous members in order to be able to move with greater rapidity through the water”.

After his stint at Cambridge, he returned to California where he became a lawyer, specialising in the admiralty jurisdiction. He also lectured in the subject at the University of California.

He was a member of the Olympic Club’s water polo team and, in 1920, trialled for the US Olympic water polo team.

He died in San Francisco at the age of 48.