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In nine days in February 1980 at Lake
Placid, N.Y., Eric Heiden accomplished what no Olympian had
ever done -- he won five individual gold medals in a single
Olympics, be it summer or winter. In becoming the Man of Gold,
the sturdy skater established five Olympic records, including
one world mark. The 21-year-old took home more gold from the
1980 Winter Olympics than Finland, Norway, the Netherlands,
Switzerland, West Germany, Italy, Canada, Hungary, Japan, Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia and France combined. Heiden was born June 14,
1958, in Madison, Wis. Heiden had been a good hockey and soccer
player growing up, but a better speed skater. When he reached
14, he began skating seriously, training five hours a day on
the ice and on dry land. One of the exercises he practiced in
his basement was on a six-foot wide plastic sheet in which,
in stocking feet, he'd simulate skating while in one place.
At the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, at the age of 17,
Heiden finished seventh in the 1,500 meters and 19th in the
5,000 meters. His younger sister Beth came in 11th in the 3,000
meters. The next year, Heiden shocked the speed-skating world
by winning the overall title at the world championships. He
also won the title in 1978 and 1979. While his championships
made him a household name in Norway and the Netherlands, where
speed skating is taken seriously, he still was a relative unknown
in the United States outside of Madison. Those who knew the
sport thought it wouldn't be a surprise if Heiden, who was on
leave from the University of Wisconsin, swept through the 1980
Olympics. His Olympic record 38.03 seconds was .34 of a second
faster than Kulikov. The next day, Heiden took his second gold.
Heiden slipped when he hit a rut in the ice. But he quickly
steadied himself, losing only a few hundredths of a second as
he continued on to win his fourth gold. Nothing stopped him
from breaking the 10,000-meter world record by 6.2 seconds,
winning in 14:28.13. "That's the last world record I had
ever expected to break," he said. He was a speed-skating
analyst for television for the four Winter Olympics from 1984
through 1994. Heiden also succeeded where it counted most for
him. He graduated from Stanford Medical School and, following
in his father's footsteps, became an orthopedic surgeon. While
Heiden prefers to downplay his golden moments, announcer Keith
Jackson doesn't. "What he did in 1980 was one of a kind,"
Jackson said, "and we will probably never see it again." |
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