Alvin Kraenzlein: The First Person To Win Four Individual Gold Medals At An Olympic From Tunde Oyedoyin, London
Arguably, legends are made, not born. On December 12, 1876, when Alvin Christian Kraenzlein was born in Milwaukee, he was thought to be just another baby, but nobody knew they were witnessing the arrival of a man whose record would last for more than a century. Are you searching for an Olympic legend, don't look any further when you start reading about the quadruple gold medalist.
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Alvin Kraenzlein is an embodiment of legendry, a status he attained at the young age of 24. At the 1900 Summer Olympics Games in Paris, he became the first athlete to win four individual gold medals (60m, long jump, 110m hurdles and 200m hurdles) at a single Olympics and more than 100 years later - as at the last Olympics in Sydney - he has the singular honour of being the only track and field athlete to have achieved that incredible feat.
But what about Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis
Don't they belong to Alvin's company
Of course, they do, but what separates him from the duo is that, unlike Lewis and Owens, Kraenzlein 's medals were in individual events, the other two complemented theirs by running the 4x100m relays. Apart from his legendary status, he's also a trail-blazer and was especially noted for his hurdling technique. He, it was, that first practised the now common method of taking a hurdle with a straight front leg.
At 19, Kraenzlein entered the University of Wisconsin and won his first major championship in the 220-yard hurdles in 1897. That same year, he left the University of Wisconsin to study dentistry at the University of Pennsylvania. In the years that followed, he gained many more titles in hurdling, sprinting and the long jump.
Kraenzlein prepared for the 1900 Olympics in England, where he won the British title in the 120 yard hurdles and the long jump; these served as the preparation he needed before moving to Paris, where his indelible mark remains to be erased or equalled. Perhaps the most remarkable of his collection of gold medals is that in the long jump. His winning margin of just a single centimeter - is itself the symbol of the Olympics motto, running faster, jumping higher and throwing further - over the silver medallist, Meyer Prinstein is among the closest winning margins in the history of the Olympics.
And who knows if Prinstein's mark - set during the qualification - would have been bettered had he not refused to attend the final, because it was held on a Sunday. But nothing can be taken away from the immortal achievement of this great American.
In 1901, he graduated as a dentist and also retired from athletics, albeit with six world records: the 60m dash, 110m, 120 yard high hurdles, 200m and the 220 yard low hurdles and of course, the long jump. It's not surprising that his record of 23.6 seconds in the 220-yard hurdles stood for 26 years.
Dr Alvin Kraenzlein practised dentistry for five years after graduating from Penn in 1901, then devoted most of the rest of his life to coaching. Between 1910 and 1913, he was the track coach at the University of Michigan, from where he was hired to prepare the German team for the 1916 Olympics.
Due to the World War I, the 1916 Olympics was postponed and he returned to the United States. After serving in the Army, he was assistant coach at Penn until 1922. He died of heart disease on January 6, 1928. Alvin Christian Kraenzlein's name is in both the National Track and Field Hall of Fame (US) and the Olympic Hall of Fame.
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