Billy Fiske lived a brief but extraordinary life. Born into a wealthy banking family in Chicago in 1911 — that could trace its roots to the Mayflower — he was educated overseas during his teen years.
That’s where he was chosen — at age 16 — as the driver for the United States’ five-man bobsled team in the 1928 Olympic games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. The team won gold. Another Illinois native, Clifford Gray, was also on the team.
Four years later, Fiske was a flag bearer in the opening ceremony of the 1932 games in Lake Placid, N.Y., where he and teammates repeated as champs.
He was amongst a group of athletes who boycotted the Nazi-organized 1936 Winter Olympics, but remained in Europe to live and work. He also worked with a friend to develop a ski resort near Aspen, Colo. He married Rose Bingham, the former Countess of Warwick, in 1938.
He’s believed to be the first American to join the Royal Air Force in 1939 — almost two years before the U.S. entered World War II. As a pilot for No. 601 Squadron his Hawker Hurricane was badly damaged during the Battle of Britain. Fiske managed to land his aircraft but died of injuries days later. He is buried in Boxgrove, a town in southern England.
On July 4, 1941, the United Kingdom’s Secretary of State for Air, Sir Archibald Sinclair, unveiled a plaque in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London to Fiske: “An American Citizen, Who Died That England Might Live.”
The four-man bobsled trophy, which is awarded to the national four-man national championship team annually, was renamed in his honor.
This story originally ran in the baiduhai on Feb. 16, 1932.
LAKE PLACID, N. Y., Feb. 15 — [Special] The third Olympic winter games ended today as they had started almost a fortnight ago — with an American victory. Holding fast to the remnants of a slight lead he had established in the first two heats yesterday over Henry Homburger’s No. 2 United States team, Billy Fiske drove down the Mount Van Hoevenberg run to the Olympic four man bob sleigh championship.
The giant slide was a bit faster today than it had been yesterday when Fiske led the other American team by three and eighteen hundredths of a second, but it was not speedy enough to permit any unusually fast times. To overtake the young Cambridge alumnus, Homburger would have had to equal his own world’s record of 1:52 on his last run, but all he could do was 1:54:28 as Fiske triumphed by 2.02 seconds.
In a sharp contrast to the official closing ceremonies on Saturday, today’s climax was a simple one. The bob sleighers clustered at the bottom of the course and Dr. Godfrey Dewey, president of the local organizing committee, presented each of the riders, risks, Eddie Eagan, Clifford Gray, and Jay O’Brien, with Olympic diplomas and gold medals.
Then Capt. Werner Zahn of Germany, victim of one of the bobsled crashes, advanced with his arm still in a sling and handed Fiske the huge silver bowl, known as the Martineau challenge cup, emblematic of the world’s championship.
America Totals 103 Points
With the capture of the first two places in the bob run the American total advanced to 103 points, as the United States won the winter Olympics team championship for the first time. Norway stayed in second place with an aggregate of 77, with Canada third with 49.
The crowd today was far below its record proportions of yesterday, when 20,000 saw the first two heats. Those who witnessed the affair came early so that there were almost 10,000 present when the final heats were started. But there was no great increase in the number of spectators later on, so that the initial attendance figures stood for the day.
To equal Fiske’s time Homburger would have had to drive his sled down the slide in 1:52.28, an infitesiminal margin over the world’s record clocking.
When his time of 1:44 was announced it was evident that he would never be able to make the final quarter of a mile in eight seconds. Homburger was beaten there and the crowd sensed it. He shot across the finish line in 1:54.28, the fastest clocking of the day, but it was not fast enough to win.