George eyser 1904 olympic games

Louis Turnverein, St. Louis was represented by the Concordia Turners at the games against clubs from cities like New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and many others. In fact, no fewer than thirteen Turnvereins participated in the Olympics, and one must assume that George Eyser was just one of many with sufficient gymnastic ability to win gold.

The popularity of gymnastics among German Americans could be one reason why the Olympic organizers decided to hold two separate gymnastic competitions. When the German team arrived in St. And since that is how the American athletes were organized, the Germans were barred from the team competitions. Not surprisingly, Eyser finished th dead last in the yard dash, th in the long jump, and 76th in the shot put.

The winner of the event, Max Emmerich of Indianapolis, won with a time of The October events were apparatus-only, allowing Eyser to capitalize on his upper-body strength and technical gymnastic ability. As a result, he won gold in the parallel bars, rope climbing, and as mentioned earlier, tied for gold with Anton Heida in the long horse vault event.

To round out his impressive day, Eyser won silver medals in the all-around and side horse, and won a bronze on the horizontal bar. Regardless of how the St. He faced quality competition in a sport that was widely contested at the time. But it certainly seems that his competitive fire continued to burn. Along with continuing his gymnastics career with the Concordia Turners, I found George Eyser in a newspaper article published six months after the St. Louis Olympics ended. The article states that the parallel bars gold medal was originally awarded to Anton Heida as the result of a scoring error.

The games in general had a confusing program of events, which were spread out over several months, and the gymnastics competition was no different.

Eyser competed in both competition sets and did poorly in the first, but performed much better in the second set. On a single day of October 29, he won 6 medals in total, of which 3 were gold parallel bars, long horse vault, and foot or 7. The car broke down before the finish, so he re-entered the race and jogged across the line, taking the applause.

The race ended up being so brutal that only 14 of 32 entrants completed the course. And the winner? Thomas Hicks — the man who drank the rat poison. Still hallucinating and barely able to move, he was carried across the line by his support team.

When I first read the story of the Olympic marathon, I found it both extraordinary and funny at the same time. We can obviously look back and say that the planning for the event was terrible and invited disaster. But, for me, the different characters of the people really stand out. You really get the impression he was just enjoying being there. It has often been said that life is a marathon, and not a sprint.

Perhaps, in your life, you might find yourself changing course in the face of adversity, like Len Tau, and needing to work out a new direction? Perhaps you might have to look elsewhere to find those who can give you what you need. Perhaps you will be like Fred Lorz — taking advantage of an opportunity to better your situation whether unfair or not.

We know very little about his life over the following years. There was one notable bit of nastiness that we found in a St. Louis Newspaper, however, that could have used some crime-fighting skills…. He scored five Golds in the following events:. Louis and with Heida competing for the Philadelphia Turngemeinde, one of the oldest clubs. The rivalry was apparently quite fierce, as Heida received a Gold medal by error and apparently refused to part with it.

The St. Louis Dispatch reports on March 15, Throughout the contests Heida and Eyser were close rivals, and the championship was finally decided by the parallel bars championship which Eyser won. The final total score was. Eyser 44 and Heida Through an error, Heida secured the gold medal and has held it despite the letters and protests of the A.