I was wondering if an athelete has been so skilled as to have competed at an Olympic level in two (or more) entirely different sports. (Do they even allow this these days?)
I’m sure it has happened sometime given the wild and wacky history of the games, so let’s qualify the question a little. Below are some factors that put the achievement in perspective. The more “points,” the more remarkable the accomplishment, IMO.
Recent games (more points) vs. early games (less points). I get the impression that in the sloppy, unspecialized and elitist early games, guys and gals competed willy-nilly in whatever they wanted. So if a top-placing hurdler also happened to be a top-placing live pigeon shooter, I would not be terribly impressed.
High performance (more) vs. low performance (less). If some dinky Third World country sends an of athlete to the games essentially saying to him/her, “do the best you can in whatever you can,” and he/she places 9th in one sport and 25th in another, that does not rank very high in by book.
Highly dissimilar sports (high) vs. closely related sports (less). Some different sports literally overlap. The Pentathalon, for example, is a mix of five largely unrelated Olympic sports. The Biathalon is a combination of two. Now, being a top Pentathelete and a top fencer isn’t worth nothing, I’ll admit, but it’s not as impressive as, say, being a top swimmer and a top fencer.
Sheila Taormina (USA) won a gold in swimming (800 relay) in Atlanta in 1996, finished sixth in triathlon in 2000 in Sydney, and is competing in Beijing in the modern pentathlon.
The ultimate would be someone who could medal in Fencing, Archery, Pistol, and Judo. They’d be pretty useful no matter where the time machine ended up.
I mean, they aren’t technically separate Olympic sports, but pentathlon and biathlon competitors do have to be quite good at some very different skills. I’ve always found the winter biathlon particularly poetic - you ski and ski and ski, and then you calm totally down and shoot something.
Willie Davenport won the gold medal in the 110-meter hurdles in 1968, took the bronze in that event in 1976, and finished fourth in that race in the 1972 Games. In 1980, his four-man bobsled team finished twelfth in the Winter Olympics.
Willie Gault made the 1980 Olympic team as a hurdler, but did not compete as the USA boycotted the Moscow Games. He also qualified as a bobsled alternate in 1988, but again did not compete in the Olympics.
This page features several other athletes who have competed for the USA in both the Summer and Winter Games. Speed skating/cycling seems to be the likeliest combo to attempt if you wish to add your name to the list.
I’m not so sure that should count as much. A lot of the better triathleates come from a swimming background because swimming is one of the harder things to do at a higher level. Not saying that doing any of the Olympic events is easy, but coming from a swimming background makes the transition a lot easier.
It’s the pentathlon that’s amazing to me. Shooting and fencing and horse jumping don’t have much in common with swimming. She basically started from scratch in those disciplines and within four years becomes the best in the country. There was a story about her a while back in ESPN the magazine.
Pentathletes usually have a swimming background, which is considered to be the only Pentathlon discipline that cannot be taught at a high level at an older age. For this reason, good swimming standards are considered to be a ‘precondition’ for participation in Modern Pentathlon. The swimming event is a free-style race over 200m for men and women with athletes seeded in heats according to their personal best time. A time of 2:30 minutes for men and 2:40 minutes for women earns 1000 Pentathlon points.
I’ve thought about trying it just for fun, but I’ve never fenced and I don’t know of any Pentathlon clubs around, though I’m sure they’re around here.
Rebecca Romero won a silver in Athens, as well as world championships, in rowing, and is now a world champion track cyclist who could well win a medal in Beijing.
That’s because speed skaters train on bikes in the summer time. It uses much the same muscle groups, heart conditioning, and so on, so it’s a good stand-in for skating. When you train that much on the bikes, you can develop to an Olympic standard.
No surprise that on the list of medal-winners in both summer and winter Olympics linked by runner pat, the two modern examples were speed skaters/sprint cyclists.
Given the overlap between gymnastics and trampoline, and between gymnastics and diving, I thought there’d be Olympians who’d medalled in the former before transitioning to trampoline or diving as they aged (and then managed to medal in that). But apparently, there aren’t any.
Also, synchronous swimming and water polo. That’s basically switching out one silly-looking swim cap for another, right?
She hasn’t won any Olympic medals, but Australia’s Alexandra Croak participated in the 2000 Sydney Olympics as a gymnast, and in the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a diver. While she hasn’t won any Olympic medals, she has medalled in both sports in other international competitions.
There are many other divers who started off as gymnasts, and switched to diving earlier in their careers.
