Part II: Ivies at the Olympics
- mcmoore27
- Aug 3, 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.
Comeback Crew
Yale’s heavyweight varsity crew was selected to represent the United States at the 1956 Summer Games on Lake Wendouree in Ballarat, Australia. The Yale crew had set a world record in the Olympic qualifying trials that Spring and was favored to take home a gold medal for the United States.
In their first race of the games, Team USA finished a distant third behind Australia and Canada on the 2,000-meter course, before rebounding with wins in the semifinals and finals to bring home the gold. It marked the first time a crew had come back to win the gold after an opening round loss.
Two-Time Olympian Cristina Teuscher
For the first time since the 1972 Munich Games, the Ivy League had a representative on Team USA in swimmer Cristina Teuscher. Teuscher took home one of the League’s two gold medals at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, swimming the second leg of the 4x200 meter freestyle relay. With Germany in the lead, Teuscher turned in a 1:58.56 to put the United States back into contention. The US team set a new Olympic record en route to a gold medal. Four years later at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, Teuscher won the Bronze in the 200-meter IM.
While at Columbia, Teuscher won four individual NCAA Championship races, set 17 school records and never lost an individual race. She was named Outstanding Ivy League Swimmer four times, and was a two-time All-American. Shortly after graduation in 2000, Teuscher was honored with the Honda-Broderick Cup, awarded to the nation’s top female collegiate athlete. She was the first Ivy Athlete and only the fourth swimmer to ever win the award.
Jimmy Pedro
Jimmy Pedro is the only Ivy Leaguer to represent the United States in lightweight judo. Pedro competed for Team USA in four consecutive Olympics from 1992 to 2004. At the 1996 Atlanta Games, Pedro became only the eighth American male to win any kind of judo medal when he claimed the bronze. He added another bronze to his collection at the 2004 Sydney Games. Pedro, a former Brown wrestler, is also a two-time gold medalist at the Pan American Games, a five-time U.S. National Champion, and was a five-time winner of the USOC’s Male Athlete for Judo.
Pedro graduated from Brown in 1994 with a degree in Business Economics, and retired from competitive judo after the Sydney Games. Pedro remains an active part of U.S. Judo, coaching Team USA in 2012 and 2016.
Berkoff Blastoff
David Berkoff, a 1989 graduate of Harvard, swam backstroke for the United States, winning a total of four Olympic medals during his career at two different Olympic Games. At the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, he won a gold medal by swimming the backstroke leg for the winning U.S. men’s team in the 4x400-meter medley relay. Individually, he took home a silver medal, placing second in the men’s 100-meter backstroke race. Four years later at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Berkoff won his second straight gold with a first-place finish in the men’s 400-meter medley relay to go along with a bronze in the 100-meter backstroke.
Familiar Foe
Ivy League wrestlers Charles “Ed” Ackerly of Cornell and Penn’s Samuel N. Gerson faced each other in the freestyle featherweight final match at the 1920 Games held in Antwerp. Having met twice in collegiate competition, and once in A.A.U., Ackerly led the all-time series. He kept that lead in Antwerp, winning the gold medal. Ackerly was the only American to bring home a gold medal, defeating all other contestants at his weight class.
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