Competition has begun at the 2024 Summer Games with the opening ceremony taking place tomorrow.
The Tribune’s Stacy St. Clair (who discovered dangerous water a decade ago at the Winter Olympics in Sochi) and Brian Cassella are in Paris to bring you stories on Chicago’s athletes, their families and much more. Read it all at chicagotribune.com/olympics. Sign up for our sports newsletter to get their latest dispatches — and follow us on Instagram for Q&As and a behind-the-scenes look at the Games.
But what about athletes from the Chicago area who previously won gold? Here’s a look back at 10 who have been at the top of their games — and on top of the world — during the modern era.
2024 Olympics: What to know — and who to watch — during the Summer Games in Paris
1900: Margaret Abbott (Golf)
Abbott recognized her win at the Prix de la ville de Compiegne in France was significant.
More Top Picks Best Clip On Book Lights For Reading In Bed
What she didn’t know, however, is that it was a monumental moment in Olympic history that would make her the first American woman to win an event at the Games.
1904: Charles Dvorak (Pole vault)
The Chicago native graduated from Lewis Institute in 1899, then attended the University of Michigan where he also participated in broad jump, high jump and discus throw. Dvorak bested the school’s and world’s records for indoor competition by vaulting 10 feet, 10 inches. He also won the title of champion pole vaulter of the Western Conference, establishing an outdoor record of 11 feet, 6 inches in 1900.
Bob Richards, the Olympic pole-vaulting star who landed on the Wheaties box, dies at 97
Dvorak traveled to France for the 1900 Summer Olympics — but failed to win a gold medal. The pole vault competition, as he understood it, was supposed to take place on a Sunday. Since this would have violated the Sabbath, he was told the event would be rescheduled. According to the University of Michigan, however, the event took place after Dvorak and other American athletes left the competition area. Dvorak was awarded a silver medal in a consolation competition that was held to accommodate the U.S. team.
He returned to Olympic competition in St. Louis four years later, posting an Olympic record 11 feet, 6 inches to take home the gold. Dvorak, according to the Olympic Games, was the first vaulter to use a lighter bamboo pole instead of the heavier ash or hickory pole.
1912: Harry Hebner (Swimming)
Though his name may not be as familiar as some of his contemporaries (including Johnny Weissmuller, Duke Kahanamoku and Bob Skelton), the Chicago native and Illinois Athletic Club swimmer was a “great of his era and one of the greatest in any and all eras,” according to the International Swimming Hall of Fame, which inducted him in 1968.
Hebner qualified for the 1908, 1912 and 1920 Olympics in swimming and water polo. After earning a bronze medal in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay in London, the University of Notre Dame law student shipped off for Stockholm in June 1912 carrying letters from the university’s president to the king of Denmark and Pope Pius. He was the favorite in the 100-meter backstroke — for which the 21-year-old held the world’s record (but international competition wouldn’t recognize the feat since it was made in a 60-foot pool). The Tribune noted Hebner, who learned how to swim at a YMCA in Chicago, was the first to use a crawl style of kick in the event.
Hebner breezed to the lead in his heat, then secured the gold medal on July 13, 1912, with a swim of 1 minute, 21 seconds. Not bad for a man who as a child thought he might be “too heavy for swimming.”
1924: Sybil Bauer (Swimming)
The daughter of Norwegian parents who moved to Chicago, Bauer didn’t start competing in events until she was a teenager at Schurz High School. Soon thereafter, however, she became the first great female swimmer of the backstroke. Bauer set 23 world records — holding at one point all existing records for women in backstroke, according to the International Swimming Hall of Fame — and won six consecutive AAU 100-yard backstroke championships, according to the Olympic Games.
Her greatest feat may have taken place in Bermuda on Oct. 8, 1922, when Bauer became the first woman to beat a world record held by a man. She completed a 440-yard backstroke race in 6 minutes, 24 seconds — almost four seconds faster than the old record held by Harold Krueger of Honolulu.
As a sophomore at Northwestern University, Bauer participated in basketball, field hockey and swimming and was the president of the campus’ Women’s Athletic Association. She was also one of five NU students chosen to compete in the 1924 Paris Olympics. She won the gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke with a world-record time of 1 minute, 23.5 seconds.
Bauer was hospitalized in November 1926, but remained optimistic despite a stay of more than three months at Michael Reese Hospital. She told reporters she was giving up swimming to marry Ed Sullivan, then a sports editor at the New York Evening Graphic and future television show host. Bauer died of cancer on Jan. 31, 1927. She was just 23 years old.
1924: Jackie Fields (Boxing)
The West Sider won the gold medal in the 1924 Olympics as a featherweight and moved to California to start his professional boxing career.
2024 Olympics: What to know — and who to watch — during the boxing tournaments in Paris
He returned to the Chicago Coliseum in 1929 to win the world’s welterweight title and regained it again in 1932 at the Chicago Stadium.
More Top Picks Best Dual Coffee Makers
1932: Joseph Webster Golinkin (Art)
Organizers of the Modern Olympics handed out medals not just to athletes, but also artists starting with the 1912 Stockholm Olympics — and architects, poets, musicians and sculptors, too. Though categories and the number and type of medals changed, art was part of the Olympics for almost four decades.
One of the men honored for his work was Golinkin, a former ensign during World War I and student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. According to the Olympic Games, Golinkin’s creative career began as a newspaper illustrator. He then became renowned for his sporting scenes including Joe Louis’s rematch against German boxer Max Shmeling in 1938, fox hunts, cycling and America’s Cup races.
Golinkin’s boxing-focused work “Leg Scissors” won the 1932 gold medal in mixed graphic arts. He later served as a Navy admiral during World War II and was awarded a medal of a different metal — a Bronze Star.
1960: Terry McCann (Wrestling)
Born in 1934 in the Kelvyn Park neighborhood, McCann was the oldest of six children. He loved basketball, his wife, Lucille, told the Tribune in 2006. But at 5 feet, 4 inches tall, in high school, he decided wrestling might be more suitable, she said.
At Schurz High School in 1952, McCann was an ardent and successful wrestler, but he was an indifferent student. After enrolling at the University of Iowa on academic probation, McCann focused on wrestling and his studies. He earned three all-America honors and two NCAA individual titles at Iowa. He also graduated with a degree in business administration in 1957 and was the father of two small children (his family later grew to seven children).
But his biggest personal achievement may have come when McCann won a gold medal in wrestling in the 1960 Rome Olympics. He defeated Nejdet Zalev of Bulgaria on point in the bantam-weight class.
“My only disappointments over there were I didn’t get to see a single other Olympic competition and our rigid training program cost me a chance for an audience with Pope John XXIII,” he told the Tribune after returning home from the competition.
McCann later helped establish USA Wrestling, a national governing body for the sport; served in various posts with the U.S. Olympic Committee; helped start a wrestling program in the Mayor Daley Youth Foundation; and mentored dozens of people.
1984: Bart Conner (Gymnastics)
The blond-haired Morton Grove native stunned the gymnastics world when, as a Niles West High School senior, he won the American Cup by defeating the world’s best male gymnasts in 1976. He was the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic team that year, but did not win a medal. He also made the 1980 team that traveled to Moscow.
But it was during the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles that the University of Oklahoma communications student became a star. First, he produced a flawless performance in the parallel bars to earn his first gold medal, which was quite a feat considering he had surgery the previous December to repair a torn bicep muscle. Then, he helped the U.S. men’s team secure its first team all-around Olympic gymnastics gold medal in 80 years.
2024 Olympics: What to know — and who to watch — during the gymnastics competitions in Paris
He married three-time gold-medal winner Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci — who dazzled the world at just 14 with perfect 10s at the 1976 Montreal Olympics — in 1996. Together they run a gymnastics academy in Norman, Oklahoma.
Conner and Comaneci were part of the Chicago delegation that traveled to Copenhagen in 2009, to make an appeal before the International Olympic Committee to be the host city for the 2016 Summer Games.
1992: Mike Conley (Triple jump)
A Luther South High School graduate, Conley traveled to Barcelona after winning silver at the 1984 Olympics but missed out on the 1988 games. His inspiration: sons Michael, then 4, and Jordan, 1 ½.
“Michael and Jordan as in Michael Jordan,” he told the Tribune in 1992.
Conley’s leap of 59 feet, 7 ½ inches was the second-longest ever at the time, but was not recorded “because the wind was one-tenth of a meter too strong,” the Tribune reported. His earlier jump of 57 feet, 10 ¼ inches set an Olympic record (today it ranks 15th). He even leaped the 3 feet from the ground to the top step of the awards stand to receive his gold medal.
2024 Olympics: Americans Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall are track and field’s power couple
More Top Picks Best Foil Shavers
Considered the best triple jumper the U.S. has ever produced, Conley was ranked first in the world six times in his career and was also a solid long jumper, ranking in the world Top 10 seven times.
Originally attending the University of Arkansas on a basketball scholarship, Conley became the agent for Michael, an Ohio State point guard who was drafted with the fourth overall pick by the Memphis Grizzlies in 2007.
2021: Jewell Loyd (Basketball)
When Jewell Loyd was growing up in Lincolnwood, she spent most of her free time at Proesel Park. Since 2019, the basketball courts there are named in her honor.
Loyd became a star at Niles West, which she led to a sectional title as a sophomore. She graduated in 2012 as the school’s career scoring leader with 3,077 points after averaging 24.8 points and 11.9 rebounds in her four-year career, during which the Wolves were 93-31. Her No. 32 jersey was retired by the school in 2021, becoming the first Niles West athlete to earn that honor.
Loyd went on to greater things, scoring 1,909 points over three seasons at Notre Dame before the Seattle Storm made her the No. 1 pick of the 2015 WNBA draft. She has since helped the Storm win two WNBA championships, played on the U.S. women’s national team that won the gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics and is heading to the Paris Games for a chance to win another gold. (The U.S. women have won every gold medal in women’s basketball since the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.)
Loyd and her brother Jarryd opened a smoothie shop in Lincolnwood in 2023.
Want more vintage Chicago?
- Become a Tribune subscriber: It’s just $12 for a 1-year digital subscription
- Follow us on Instagram: @vintagetribune
Thanks for reading!
Join our Chicagoland history Facebook group and follow us on Instagram for more from Chicago’s past.
Have an idea for Vintage baiduhai? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at [email protected] and [email protected].