Images Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society (Fawcett, Gagne); Shutterstock: Sanit Fuangnakhon (london), art3 (discus), Lukeruk (basketball), John T Takai (medal), Cristina Romero Palma (athens), Michal Sanca (runner), Ben Smith (car); Archive PL / Alamy Stock Photo (Hoover), Xinhua / Alamy Stock Photo (Whalen); getty / Harry How (Lee)
Five images of Olympic events
1924
Wilford Hamilton “Captain Billy” Fawcett
In an epic life—covered the crime beat for the Strib, partied with Clark Gable—Wilford Hamilton “Captain Billy” Fawcett finds time to compete with the Olympic trap shooting team in Paris.
1946
red double decker bus
Blimey! Minneapolis loses its first bid to host the Summer Olympics to London.
1948
Verne Gagne
Verne Gagne is outpointed by eventual gold medal winner Henry Wittenberg at the U.S. Trials. Gagne still travels to London but is bitterly disappointed when U.S. officials don’t allow him to wrassle.
1956
orange silhouette of a discus thrower
Fortune Gordien wins silver for discus, likely leaving him slightly bummed. It’s an improvement on his bronze from ’48, but the world record that he set in between Olympics will stand for a decade.
1956
Walter Hoover rowing
The great Duluth oarsman Walter Hoover moves to Detroit and serves as the U.S. Olympic Rowing Team’s small boats coach. Under his tutelage, the U.S. team wins two golds, two silvers, and a bronze.
1960
illustration of a basketball
Austin’s Burdette “Burdie” Haldorson wins a second basketball gold medal. Unlike teammates Jerry West and Oscar Robertson, Haldorson never goes pro, but the 1960 squad is so great that the team is later inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
1966
Former Olympian Alan Rice forms the Minnesota Amateur Wrestling Club, known as the Minnesota Storm. Rice cherishes the fact that the club qualifies at least one member of every U.S. Olympic wrestling team from 1968 on.
1984
illustration of a silver medal
Though its high school doesn’t have a varsity girls’ swim team, Eden Prairie is quick to claim military brat Susan Rapp when she wins the silver in the breaststroke at the L.A. Games.
1988
Minneapolis–St. Paul is out-charmed by Atlanta to host the Summer Games. The usual Twin Cities civic self-recrimination about feeling inferior to a sexier city ensues.
1992
Bob Kempainen and Janis Klecker qualify for the marathon in Barcelona. Kempainen surprises, finishing third in the U.S. men’s trials—only his second-ever marathon—while Klecker wins the U.S. women’s trials in a thriller.
1994
A year after rooming together at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado, Carrie Tollefson edges out Kara Wheeler (now Kara Goucher) in the state AA cross-country championship. They’ll both go on to run in the Olympics, but never in the same Games.
1996
silhouette of runner with city in the background
Former Anoka High School soccer goalie Briana Scurry vows to run naked through the streets of Athens, Ga., if Team USA wins the inaugural women’s soccer tournament. They do, and she does, wearing nothing but her gold medal.
2000
front of a Corvette
St. Paul’s Tom Malchow holds his father to his childhood wager that if he wins a gold medal—which he did in Sydney’s 200-meter butterfly—that dad would buy him a new Corvette.
2016
Lindsey Whalen making a basketball play
Five Minnesota Lynx—Lindsay Whalen, Maya Moore, Seimone Augustus, Sylvia Fowles, and coach Cheryl Reeve—come home from Rio de Janeiro with gold medals.
2019
Three years removed from a silver medal in cycling, Kelly Catlin takes her own life while at Stanford for graduate school. Her father blames the suicide on depression partly caused by a head injury sustained during training.
2021
Sunsia Lee portrait
Sunisa Lee overcomes the pressure of representing every Minnesotan in the state and every Hmong in the world, sticks the landing, and wins gold in Tokyo—we hope.
