PRINTMid-Missouri's past medalists and present Olympians
Athletes represent Missouri in the games of yesterday and today
July 26, 2012 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Name: Jackson Scholz
Local Link: MU
Event: Sprints
Medal count: Two golds, one silver
Sometimes it’s hard to improve on an original. Case in point: New Coke, Caddyshack II, the 1996 follow-up to the Dream Team. Such is the case with mid-Missouri’s first Olympic medalist. Jackson Scholz, at one point considered the fastest man in the world, has more medals than any other athlete on the list — gold in the 1920 4x100-meter relay, gold in the 1924 200-meter dash and silver in the 1924 100-meter dash — and only Helen Stephens has as many golds. Scholz is also the only athlete to be portrayed in an Academy Award-winning film (Chariots of Fire) or play himself in an American Express commercial.
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Scholz wasn’t just fast for his era, either. He was fast, period. His MU record in the 100-yard dash stood for nearly 50 years, eons in track time. And his 1924 gold-medal time of 21.6 seconds in the 200-meter dash would have tied the fastest time by an MU sprinter in the event this year. With the advances in training and nutrition modern athletes have, that isn’t supposed to happen. But with speed like Scholz’s, it did.
Name: Helen Stephens
Local Link: William Woods University
Events: Sprints, throws
Medal count: Two golds
Perhaps mid-Missouri’s most notable athlete to date, Helen Stephens dominated like few competitors ever have. In her entire athletic career, Stephens never lost a race.
Growing up in a rural community during the Depression, she didn’t have access to organized sports teams. Instead, she trained by doing chores on the farm and running with the horses.
In her first official race, she beat Stella Walsh, the reigning Olympic champion and set a new U.S. indoor record in the 50-meter dash. She also took home first place in the standing broad jump and shot put. In just one meet, the 17-year-old phenom had established herself as one of the world’s elite.
A year later, Stephens won two gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, one each in the 100-meter dash and 4x100-meter relay. She also set a world record in the 100-meter dash with a time that would stand for 24 years.
She was an active athlete well into her later years and participated in Missouri’s senior games in the 1980s.
Name: Dan Pippin
Local Link: MU
Event: Basketball
Medal count: One gold
Dan Pippin was one of the first freshmen ever to play for MU. Because WWII called so many athletes into service, the NCAA decided to lift its ban on freshmen eligibility. The lift allowed 17-year-old Pippin to play a season early.
Pippin later served two years in the military before returning to finish his career at MU. He left as the all-time leading scorer with 802 points. He held the honor for a few seasons.
Three years later, Pippin was captain of the 1952 U.S. Olympic team that defeated the Soviets with a final score of 36-25, which earned the players the gold medal.
Name: Wu Dan
Local Link: Columbia College
Event: Volleyball
Medal count: One bronze
Unlike the other Olympians on this list, Wu Dan went about things a bit differently. Dan, who is Chinese, made two Olympic teams before ever setting foot in Columbia. In 1988, she and her teammates on the Chinese volleyball team took home a bronze medal. She made the Olympics again in 1992, but she was forced to miss the games after testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug, strychnine, also commonly used as rat poison.
Dan spent one All-American season at Columbia College in 1995 before returning to the Olympics in 2000, but she never medaled again.
Name: Chidi Imoh
Local Link: MU
Event: Sprints
Medal count: One silver
Chidi Imoh, a Nigerian sprinter who burned up the track at MU in the mid-’80s, still holds multiple records at his alma mater. His times in the 100-meter dash, the 4x100 relay and the 4x200 relay still stand almost 20 years after he last laced up his spikes for the Tigers.
In an age when Olympic sprinters shatter records seemingly at will and inspire questions of just how far the human body can go, Imoh’s longevity on the leader board is a testament to his talent. Not that his silver medal in the 1992 4x100 relay left much doubt about that in the first place.
Name: Natasha Kaiser-Brown
Local Link: MU
Event: Sprints
Medal count: One silver
No woman in MU athletics history has reached peaks higher than Natasha Kaiser-Brown. Her standout MU career culminated in being named Big 8 Female Athlete of the Year in 1989. But she was just getting off the starting blocks. Three years later, Kaiser-Brown ran a leg of the 4x400 meter for the relay team that won the silver for the U.S. It stands as the sole Olympic medal won by a female athlete from MU.
She continued running and winning for another eight years. She took an individual silver in the 400-meter dash and gold in the 4x400 meter relay at the 1993 World Championships. In 1997, she won another silver at the World Championships and set a new American record in the 4x400 meter relay in the process.
The Iowa-born speedster finally slowed down in 2000 when she took the head coaching position for the Drake University track and field program.
Name: Linas Kleiza
Local Link: MU
Event: Basketball
Medal count: None
Forward Linas Kleiza’s freshman season was supposed to be a hallmark year for Quin Snyder’s program, which opened 2003-04 season ranked fifth in the AP pre-season poll. The team never approached those expectations, though, and won just 16 games. In Kleiza’s two years in Columbia, MU went a combined 32-31.
The native of Kaunus, Lithuania, has had better luck in his post-collegiate career. He’s played in the NBA post-season four times, each with the Denver Nuggets. But Kleiza has really shined on the international stage. He was a key player in Lithuania’s fourth-place team in the 2008 Olympics. It narrowly missed the bronze in a 12-point loss to Argentina.
In this summer’s International Basketball Federation World Olympic qualifying tournament, in which Lithuania earned a spot in the Olympic Games, Kleiza led his country in scoring with an average of 19.3 points per game. Lithuania will be in medal contention again, thanks in large part to the former MU forward.
Name: Christian Cantwell
Local Link: MU
Event: Shot put
Medal count: One silver
For most people, an Olympic silver medal would be an honor. For Christian Cantwell, his 2008 silver failed to live up to his expectations. Earlier that year, Cantwell took home gold in the International Association of Athletics Federations World Indoor Championships. In 2006, he had eight of the 10 longest throws in the world. He took gold in the 2009 IAAF World Championships and defeated the 2008 Olympic gold medalist in the process.
Cantwell finished third at the U.S. Olympic trials earlier this year. His best throw of the event flew 69 feet, 9 3/4 inches, farther than his silver-medal throw in 2008. In July, Cantwell hurled a shot more than 73 feet, 2 inches. That throw is the longest in the world this year, and it would have easily won gold in 2008.
No athlete with mid-Missouri ties has won an Olympic gold since Pippin’s win with the basketball team 60 years ago, and it’s been more than 75 years since an athlete has taken home the top prize in an individual event. With Cantwell’s long history of world dominance and recent behemoth-like feats in the thrower’s circle, he might usher mid-Missouri into another century of Olympic medals.
Name: Larry Young
Local Link: Columbia College
Event: Race walking
Medal count: Two bronze
Race walking isn’t the most high-profile sport in the summer Olympics. It’s not glamorous like sprinting at superhuman speeds or hurling gigantic metal objects crazy distances. But the medals are no different, and Larry Young has two of them. In fact, his bronze medals in the 1968 and 1972 games are the only two Olympic medals in the race walking events ever won by an American.
Name: Dick Cochran
Local Link: MU, class of ‘61
Event: Discus
Medal count: One bronze
The lone bronze medal in MU history belongs to Dick Cochran, a two-time NCAA champion in the discus at MU. After taking the collegiate crown in both 1959 and 1960, Cochran took his talents to Rome for the 1960 Olympics. While there, he beat the distances of every thrower from every other country. Unfortunately for Cochran, a couple other Americans were also in the field: Al Oerter from New York and Rink Babka from Southern California. Oerter took home the gold, Babka the silver. Cochran’s bronze made it an all-American medal ceremony, which Cochran later said made the Olympics so memorable. It was the last time three Americans swept the discus event at the Olympics.
Name: Brutus Hamilton
Local Link: MU, class of ‘22
Events: Decathlon, pentathlon
Medal count: One silver
Brutus Hamilton only has one Olympic medal, a silver he won in the 1920 decathlon, but his Olympic resume extends much further. He wasn’t just a talented athlete; Hamilton also had a knack for squeezing the most out of other skilled individuals. As a decathlete, Hamilton had first-hand knowledge of a wide range of events that he used to put together one of the most successful coaching careers in track and field history. He spent three decades as the head coach at the University of California, and in 1952 he was the head track and field coach for the U.S. Olympic team. The U.S. took home 14 gold medals under his guidance.
