Today on Oldest Olympians, we wanted to update a few Olympic mysteries that have been solved since we first posted them. The first is that of Uruguayan boxer Arquímedes Arrieta, for whom we found a record of an individual with that name who died in 1937. Connor Mah was able to uncover that Olympian was the person who died and that he was murdered on New Year’s Day, although further details were not available.

(Hong Jong-Oh, pictured in his obituary)

Second, Korean track athlete Hong Jong-Oh, born July 7, 1925, was on our list of Olympians for whom we last had evidence of being alive in 2012, and we ultimately removed him from our tables earlier this year because we could not find any subsequent updates. We have now learned that he died September 13, 2011 and thus was never among the Oldest Olympians, or even alive when we believed him to be.

(Beverly Faulds)

In happier news, we want to thank the son of field hockey player Beverly Faulds, born May 16, 1933, for contacting us to confirm that his father is still alive as what we believe to be the oldest living Olympian to have represented Zimbabwe. We also want to thank Ralf Regnitter for responding to our last post to let us know that Swiss rower Ernst Hürlimann is also still alive.

Finally, as an update to someone that was never an Olympic mystery, earlier this year we highlighted Chilean track athlete Eduardo Fontecilla, born November 9, 1929, as among the oldest Olympians. We have since learned, however, that he died June 7, 2019, and thus did not reach the age of 90.

Today we believe that the oldest living Romanian Olympian, Francisc Horvath, is celebrating his 96^th birthday. We featured Horvath in our Olympic medal mysteries series a while ago, as he won bronze in bantamweight, Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1956 Melbourne Games. In response, one reader provided a report that showed him alive in 2021, but others have pointed out sources claiming that he died in 1969 or 1980, and it remains unclear which is correct. Nonetheless, since there is a reasonable chance that he is still alive, we are wishing him a happy birthday!

Today is also the 90^th birthday of another Olympic medal mystery, Swiss rower Ernst Hürlimann. Hürlimann represented his country in the double sculls at the 1960 Rome Games, where he won a bronze medal alongside Rolf Larcher. This is all that we know about him, and we have not been able to ascertain if he is alive or deceased.

We also wanted to raise a final Olympic medal mystery today: Danish rower John Rungsted Sørensen, born October 5, 1934, represented Denmark in the C-2 1000 event at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and won a bronze medal with Peer Norrbohm. The following year, the duo won another bronze medal in that event, this time at the 1965 European Championships. This is the extent of what we know about him, and we have been unable to confirm whether or not he reached his 90^th birthday.

For the first time in a little while, Oldest Olympians has two milestone birthdays to celebrate so, rather than choose between them, we are going to feature both in a single blog entry!

(Muhammad Ashraf, pictured at SBS Urdu)

First, we are wishing a happy 96th birthday to Muhammad Ashraf, the oldest living Olympic wrestler! Ashraf represented Pakistan at the 1956 Melbourne Games, where he was eliminated in round four of the lightweight, freestyle event. He did win gold medals in this category at the 1958 and 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, in addition to bronze at the 1954 Asian Games. He coached the national team from 1960 through 1972 and then moved to Australia to run their wrestling squad. He now resides in Adelaide.

Secondly, British speed skater Henry Howes is turning 96 as the oldest living Olympic speed skater! Howes represented his country in four events at the 1948 St. Moritz Games, with a best finish of 18th in the 1500 metres. He won four national titles between 1946 and 1950 and now resides in Staines, Sussex.

Today Oldest Olympians is ending our look into mystery competitors from the 1948 London Olympics for whom we lack both a date of birth and confirmation as to whether they are alive or deceased. Given the time that has passed, nearly all of these Olympians would be at least 90 years old, but there is a possibility that some are still alive. Today we will conclude by mentioning the remaining Egyptian participants who meet this definition.

(Mohamed Soliman)

Our first Olympian is Mohamed Soliman, who represented Egypt in the basketball tournament at the London Games, where the nation placed 19^th in a field of 23 teams. He was a member of the Young Men’s Muslim Association of Cairo and we have a picture of him, posted above, but otherwise we have been unable to uncover more information due to his name being fairly common. We have encountered a similar problem with diver Mohamed Ibrahim, who placed 22^nd in the springboard event. In his case, we suspect that we may have gone by a different name domestically, but we have no proof.

The final two Olympians took part in the water polo tournament, where Egypt was eliminated in the semi-finals and placed seventh overall in the classification round. While we have had mixed results in locating information about the team in general, we have been unable to find anything at all about Mohamed Haraga and Mohamed Khadry.

(Abílio Brandão)

We have one more update on this subject: thanks to research from Connor Mah, we have learned that one of the Olympians that we covered in this series, Portuguese sport shooter Abílio Brandão, was born October 15, 1910 in Porto, giving us some additional information. With that, we are concluding our look into this topic, which means that next time we will have something new and different to present. We hope that you will join us!