Part I: Ivies at the Summer Olympics
- mcmoore27
- Aug 2, 2016
- 3 min read
Few conferences or leagues can match the rich Olympic history of the Ivy League. For more than a century, its students, student-athletes and coaches have represented their countries on the world's biggest stage, collecting an amazing total of 467 medals. This count would rank in the top 15 on the all-time medal table if the Ivy League's eight institutions collectively were a country.
As the Rio Olympic Games move ever closer, IviesinRio2016.com will spend the next three days unveiling some of the greatest Olympic moments in league history. They are presented in no certain order.
First Gold Medal of the Modern Olympics
The first modern Olympic Games in Athens, Greece attracted 241 men from 14 nations. The American team was made up of 12 men, all from the Ivy League, either Columbia, Harvard or Princeton. James B. Connolly, an 1899 Harvard graduate, claimed gold in the triple jump, silver in the high jump and bronze in the long jump to earn his place in history – the first person to be crowned Olympic Champion since the ancient Greek Games over 1,500 years prior.
Alicia Sacramone Medals in Gymnastics
Alicia Sacramone is one of the most decorated American gymnasts. At the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China, Sacramone helped captured a silver medal for the United States Gymnastics team. She competed in the floor, beam and vault.
Sacramone became the first Ivy Leaguer to win a gymnastics medal as an undergraduate since 1904 when John Grieb of Yale did so. Sacramone graduated from Brown in 2010.
Basketball
Dartmouth’s Crawford Palmer earned the second ever medal in men’s basketball at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, helping Team France to a second-place finish. Palmer scored 10 points in the gold medal game. It marked the first time an Ivy Leaguer had earned an Olympic medal in basketball since Princeton’s Bill Bradley ’65 captained the 1964 Tokyo squad to gold.
Palmer graduated from Dartmouth in 1993, and played professional basketball in France from 2002-06.
Four In ‘64
Don Schollander put his stamp on Olympic history by becoming the first swimmer to win four gold medals at one Olympics, a feat that would go unmatched until Mark Spitz’s seven-for-seven in 1972. Schollander earned victories in the 100-meter freestyle, 400-meter freestyle, 4x100-freestyle relay and the 4x200-freestyle relay. The 18-year-old was named the top athlete at the Tokyo Games and was the United States and World Athlete of the Year. Four years later, Schollander added another gold and silver medal at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City.
A 1968 graduate of Yale, Schollander served as captain of the Bulldog’s swim team, winning three individual NCAA championships.
Diana Matheson
Since joining the Canadian national soccer team in 2003, Diana Matheson has played in three Olympic games: Beijing, London and now Rio. Four years ago in London, she scored the winning goal in the bronze-medal game against France to give Canada its first-ever Olympic women's soccer medal. Matheson has now represented Canada in 180 international matches, making her second all-time for a Canadian player.
Matheson graduated from Princeton in 2008 with a degree in economics. The midfielder was voted Ivy League Player of the Year in 2007 and Princeton Women’s Athlete of the Year in 2008. She currently plays for the Washington D.C. Spirit in the National Women’s Soccer League in the United States.
ความคิดเห็น