It just sounds crazy.
And it’s even crazier that we’ve never heard about it.
An Olympic gymnast with a wooden leg won six medals?
At the Olympics in ºüÀêÊÓƵ?
And the gymnast was from ºüÀêÊÓƵ?
What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on here?
It’s a remarkable story — gobsmacking, even! — yet it never became part of local lore.
The fellow’s name was George Eyser. And as we ready for the 2024 Olympics later this month, let’s learn more about Eyser’s accomplishments during the third Olympiad, 120 years ago, in our own backyard.
“I’m really happy you can introduce him to your readership,†said by phone in an interview. “I really think he’s someone who the Olympics should celebrate and someone who your city should celebrate.â€
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The great writer Prager has made a career on what he called “solving secrets.†In 2001, he broke the story that the 1951 Giants used sign-stealing to help hitter Bobby Thomson smack the “shot heard ‘round the world.†Prager found the heir to Margaret Wise Brown, who wrote “Goodnight Moon.†And his book “The Family Roe: An American Story†revealed the identity and story of the baby from the Roe vs. Wade case (the book was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction).
Prager himself is disabled. He was in a 1990 bus accident that broke his neck and left him hemiplegic. Prager said when stories would come out about the famous (turned infamous) track star Oscar Pistorius, they often had “this sort of obligatory paragraph that he wasn’t the first amputee in Olympics history.†The stories would mention South African swimmer Natalie du Toit from 2008 and gymnast George Eyser from 1904.
“And I was like, ‘What? There’s a guy who won six medals with a wooden leg? That sounds ludicrous.’†Prager said. “I would Google him, and there would be nothing known about the man — almost literally nothing other than his Olympic stuff. They didn’t know how he died, they didn’t know how he lost his leg, they didn’t know anything about his family, what he did for a living, they just didn’t know anything.â€
The result was Prager’s 5,000-word It tells the untold story.
Eyser emigrated to America from Germany when he was 14 (and became a U.S. citizen). He became an accomplished gymnast (or “Turnerâ€) at the German-inspired Turnvereinens of the time in America. Then he lost part of his left leg (but, as Prager reported, not from a train accident). Ultimately, Eyser’s leg to his knee was amputated. But he amazingly returned to gymnastics and, with a prosthetic left leg, excelled.
He lived in Denver but moved to ºüÀêÊÓƵ. His local club, Concordia Turnverein Saint Louis, was ultimately able to compete in the 1904 Olympics.
The ºüÀêÊÓƵ Olympics spanned over several months. There were two stages of gymnastics events. The first, in July of 1904, had gymnasts also compete in some track and field competitions to earn their final score.
Wrote Prager: “Against a field of 117 others, Eyser finished 76th in the shot put and dead last in both the long jump and 100-yard dash, running the race in 15.4 seconds. That a one-legged man had finished the race only 4.8 seconds behind the winner was remarkable. But Eyser had nonetheless dropped far from medal contention. He would have to wait until late October for that second Olympics competition — one that would not involve any track and field components.â€
It was Oct. 28, 1904.
Eyser was 34.
Of the dozens of competitors, there was Czech-born Anton Heida. He was a star.
But Eyser won the gold in the parallel bars.
“Next was the horse vault,†Prager wrote. “Two years prior, Heida had been the national vault champion. For Eyser, it was the most difficult apparatus; hurtling aside, he had to land three times. This he did in a manner, the judges ruled, equal to Heida.â€
Eyser and Heida tied and each won gold.
Eyser also won gold in the rope climb, speeding to the top of a 25-foot rope in seven seconds.
Three gold medals.
Eyser also won silver in the pommel horse and bronze in the horizontal bar (Heida winning both).
A final gold, silver and bronze were given to the top-three overall scorers. Heida earned gold and Eyser earned silver — Eyser’s sixth Olympic medal, all on one glorious, glistening day.
In his piece, Prager reported a tragic end to Eyser’s life. Many members from the Eyser family suffered from mental illness. Eyser shot himself and died in 1919 at the age of 48.
But did his legacy live on? Even a ºüÀêÊÓƵ-born sportswriter didn’t know his story. But all these years later, we’re now learning the details of Eyser’s historic achievements, which he accomplished with a wooden leg, while competing on the world’s biggest sports stage.
“I wanted to restore this man to what I saw was his proper place,†Prager said.