In a detail that merited a passing mention on television and in print over the weekend, the victory of the United States women’s 4x100-meter medley relay swimming team was calculated to be the 1,000th gold medal for the nation in the history of the Summer Olympics.
That’s more than the next three (Soviet Union, Great Britain, France) combined. As of midday Tuesday, the total is 1,005 – even if Monday was the first gold-free Summer Olympic day for the U.S. since Aug. 20, 2008.
Here’s a few of the stories of those 1,005, some of them truly beautiful.
1. James Connolly, Athens 1896, triple jump: Connolly was told his grades at Harvard weren’t good enough to take a leave of absence to participate in the revival of the Olympic Games held in April 1896, so he quit.
Hopping twice on his right foot (now illegal), Connolly marked 13.71 meters (44 feet, 11¾ inches) and defeated Frenchman Alexandre Tufferi by a meter. Tuesday’s Olympic champion, Christian Taylor of Fayetteville, Ga., leaped 17.86 meters (58 feet, 7¼ inches).
Connolly also contested the second Olympiad (in Paris), taking second in the same event.
35. Margaret Ives Abbott, Paris 1900, women’s golf: The Calcutta-born Abbott shot a 47 on Oct. 3 to win the nine-hole women’s golf tournament against nine others, including her mother, who tied for seventh. The Paris 1900 games were spread out over a period of months and poorly organized. Abbott died in 1955 without knowing the golf tournament for which she received a porcelain cup was an Olympic event, much less that she was the first American female Olympic champion.
288. George Roth, Los Angeles 1932, men’s club swinging (gymnastics): The first LA games were held at the depths of the Great Depression in what was considered at that time to be a remote part of the world, 26 years before even the Dodgers came to town. The total competitor count was less than half that of the previous Olympiad, in Amsterdam.
Roth, then unemployed, snuck food out of the Olympic Village to his wife and baby daughter, who lived in East Hollywood. Roth was the best of the four participants, and after receiving his gold medal in front of a capacity crowd, he tucked it in his pocket and hitchhiked home.
649. Dave Wottle, Munich 1972, men’s 800 meters: Wottle was born in Ohio and was still a student at Bowling Green when he lined up for the Olympic final. Clearly identifiable on grainy YouTube footage by his white painter’s cap, Wottle ran deep at the back against a fast pace. Over the last lap, he picked off all seven finalists one by one, finishing with the Soviet champion Yevgeny Arzhanov, edging the Ukrainian to the tape by .03 seconds in a thrilling finish.
Wottle, an ROTC student, forgot to take the cap off during the medal ceremony and when asked if he was staging a protest, he admitted to the oversight and formally apologized.
965. Claressa Shields, London 2012, women’s middleweight boxing: Shields ascended from a broken home in Flint, Mich., to the Olympic ring before her senior year of high school. Once there, she fought for her downtrodden city, dispatching a Russian nearly twice her age for the U.S.’s only boxing gold medal of those games.
Shields fights again today in Rio as the quest to add her name to the next thousand American Olympic champions begins.
Brandon Veale is a copy editor for the News Tribune.
