THE SEOUL GAMES / DAY 6 : Life’s Been a Cruise : Olympics’ Oldest Competitor Is a Sailor From Bahamas

Durward Knowles competed in his first Summer Olympics 40 years ago, long before many of the other sailors competing this week in the Pusan Harbor were born. But he is not about to sail off into the sunset.

Knowles, 70, is the third-oldest man to compete in the Summer Games. Two men were 72 when they competed, Arthur von Pongracz, who was a member of Austria’s dressage team in 1936, and Oscar Swahn, who won a gold medal for Sweden in 1920 in the long-since-discontinued sport of double-shot running deer shooting.

But Knowles prefers another distinction. He owns the only gold medal the Bahamas have ever won, winning the 2-man Star class 24 years ago at the Tokyo Games, the fifth of his 8 Olympics. He also won a bronze medal in 1956 at Melbourne.

Knowles said that when he went to the airport in Nassau, his hometown, last month for a flight to Miami, where he would change planes before resuming his journey to South Korea, the taxi driver expressed the sentiment he has heard from many Bahamians.

“Bring it back again,” the driver said.

Knowles shook his head and laughed when he told the story. Just by looking at him and his white hair, expressive blue eyes and leathery, weather-beaten skin, it is easy to imagine him telling stories for hours, of captaining freighters carrying fruit from Haiti to Havana to Miami, of sailing in virtually all of the world’s seas, of 35 years as the harbor pilot in Nassau.

“I can’t make the people in the Bahamas believe that it’s impossible for me to win here,” he said Wednesday morning on a clear day in Pusan, South Korea’s largest port, as he prepared for the second afternoon of Star class competition. “I tell them, ‘Don’t expect any miracles.’ But they say, ‘He did it before, he can do it again.’ They don’t know anything about sailing.”

He said that he would not even be here, had it not been for the graciousness of a crew member 40 years his junior, Steve Kelly. After missing the Summer Olympics in 1976 and 1980, Knowles wanted to represent the Bahamas in 1984 in Los Angeles. But he was beaten by a boat skippered by Kelly.

Knowles acknowledged that Kelly could have beaten him again this year, but instead, the younger sailor offered to crew for him in the 2-man boat.

“He’s a better sailor, and he should be here with his own boat,” Knowles said. “But he suggested that we crew together for the record’s sake, me being 70 years old and back in the Olympics 40 years after my first one.”

Knowles said that Kelly has to work harder than any other crewman in the Star class because, frankly, the skipper is not as strong as he once was.

They had a particularly troublesome time on the first day of competition Tuesday, when strong winds turned the sea to chop. The waves had no backs, making for a bumpy ride as the boats were lifted, then dropped, ocean water spilling over into them. Knowles said he didn’t have the upper body strength to keep a tight hold on the massive sail.

Of the 18 boats that finished, Knowles and Kelly were last. But at least they finished, which is more than can be said for 3 other crews. They were the last of 19 crews that finished Wednesday.

Knowles made some typically self-effacing comments about his performance the first day.

“I was just trying to get back,” he said.

In all classes, the competitors race for 7 days, throwing out their worst result, to determine a winner.

“You know how I’m going to feel after 7 races?” he asked. “I might just throw out the last one and go home.”

But he said that he didn’t feel too bad after the first race. “I guess I don’t try as hard as I used to,” he said. “That’s the difference. I kind of know my place out there.”

His competitors also know his place in the sport’s history. Five years ago, they elected him commodore of the Star class.

Their respect for him is obvious.

“Sometimes, they call me Mr. Knowles until I set them straight,” he said. “We’re all on the same footing here.”

But Knowles suspects that he might not receive so much deference if he were still a medal contender.

“Everyone here, especially in the Star class, is much friendlier than in Tokyo,” he said. “In Tokyo, I was one of the favorites. The Americans don’t talk to you then. Now, I’m here for the visit, and they’re friendly to me.”

Knowles also was the favorite in his first Olympics in 1948, a year after he had won his only world championship in the Star class at Alamitos Bay in California.

He competed then for Great Britain, which was the Bahamas’ colonial master. It wasn’t until 1952 that the Bahamas had its own team.

“I had to go to England to qualify against the English chaps,” he said. “I rode over on the Queen Mary. They actually had to hold up the Queen Mary for me and my boat in Miami because my ship from the Bahamas was late.”

He said that he should have won at least a silver medal in 1948 but that he tacked too sharply in front of another boat and was disqualified. A broken mast prevented him from winning a bronze medal in 1968.

“As the years go on, the more and more it means to me to have won a gold medal,” he said. “If you win a world championship, nobody refers to you as the world champion if you’ve also won an Olympic gold medal. The first thing anyone says when they introduce me is that I won a gold medal in 1964.

“The only thing I regret is coming so close to other medals and not getting them. In 1948, we had the silver medal in the bag in the last race. But I went all out and blew it. It’s still with me. Why did I push so hard?”

Like his father before him, Knowles is the harbor pilot in Nassau. He also captains tugboats and barges and sails in regattas in the United States. His boat is docked in Miami.

He estimated that he spends more time on the sea than the land, but his wife of 41 years, Holly, never goes near the water.

“She gets seasick if she goes on the dock,” he said.

Until Tuesday, she had never seen him compete in the Olympics. She had a good excuse in 1948, staying home to give birth to the first of their 3 children.

Knowles’ boat that year cost $5,000.

The boat he uses now cost $30,000.

“Don’t tell my wife,” he said. “She still thinks a boat costs $5,000, with $300 sails.”