Ray Ewry

Ewry at the Olympic Games 1900

Raymond Clarence " Ray" Ewry ( born October 14, 1873 in Lafayette, Indiana, † September 29, 1937 in New York City, New York) was an American athlete who participated in four Olympic Games, in 1900 in Paris, 1904 St. Louis, 1906 at the unofficial games in Athens and 1908 in London. Overall, he won ten gold medals at these games, which made him one of the most successful athletes in the modern Olympic Games.

Career

The extraordinary thing about his athletic career was that he was ill as a child at the age of five years from polio and had to use a wheelchair for some time. However, he ran, he no longer learned. After completing an engineering degree at Purdue University, where he drove in several college teams American football and athletics, he went to New York and became a member of the New York Athletic Club.

His ten gold medals he won in all the discharged only 1900-1912 at the Olympic Games stand jumping competitions (as high jump, standing long jump and standing triple jump ). He was the undisputed dominant athlete of these disciplines, and not without reason was his nickname The Human Frog.

During his first part in the Olympics, the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900, he won in all three disciplines, which were held all on the same day (19 July ). At the Olympic Games in 1904 in St. Louis, he was able to defend the title in all three disciplines of the Olympic champion. Two circumstances are responsible for ensuring that Ewry not subsequently became one of the most successful athletes in the Olympic Games. Firstly, the state triple jump was taken after 1904 from the Olympic program, on the other hand, the Summer Olympics Games in 1906 in Athens, where Ewry again won the gold medal in the state high jump and standing long jump, not counted by the IOC to the official Olympic Games. These two medals not therefore appear on the official statistics. The last two gold medals he finally struck gold at the Olympic Games 1908 in London again in the state high jump and standing long jump. All competitions to which Ewry was begun at the Olympics, he had so won and brought it to said ten gold medals. He is more successful than the American swimmer Mark Spitz or his compatriot, the athlete Carl Lewis ( nine gold medals ). Officially Ray Ewry but with eight gold medals out in tenth place of the most successful Olympian of all time (as of 2007 ).

His world record in the standing long jump of 3,476 m from 1904 to 1938 had on hand, from then on, this competition was not played. In the period 1898-1910 he won 15 AAU championships. In 1974, he was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame and in 1983 in the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.

At the age Ewry again suffered from a serious illness, bone tuberculosis. Finally a result of this disease, he died of pneumonia.