If you marvel at the modern day gymnasts at World Championships and Olympic Games, the chances are you would have been in awe of George Eyser.
Frederick Ludwig Jahn, known as “Father Jahn,” is credited amongst the Germans as being the man who created a gymnastics movement in Germany. This was a form of exercise that the youth embraced in the 1800’s. The Gymnastics clubs were known as Turnverein. Sadly these Turnverein Gymnastic clubs became embroiled in the Political system and after the revolutions in the mid 1880’s the clubs were disbanded. When many Germans fled their homeland they moved to countries like the USA, and one of the ways that they slotted into their new communities was by resorting to what they knew, physical activities and especially gymnastics.
Eyser was any only child born on August 31, 1870 – some say 1871 – in Kiel, Germany. When he was 14, his family emigrated to the United States and initially settled in Denver, Colorado. Around 1902 he moved St Louis.
There is little known about his childhood except that he was at some point run over by a train and lost most of his left leg. Despite this loss he was by all accounts still a very active young man and when he moved to St Louis he joined Concordia Turnverein Saint Louis.
No one knows whether George moved to St Louis purely because of Olympic ambition, as the city was to host the 1904 Olympic Games. He worked as a book-keeper with a construction company and also took part in a number of physical activities with a wooden prosthetic leg.
It is unlikely that George moved to St Louis purely due to the Olympic Games as originally New York was to host them. Then it was to be Chicago. In the end St Louis was given the task and it was tacked onto the St Louis World Fair at President Theodore Roosevelt’s demand. A move that very nearly killed the Olympic Games for good.
The St Louis Olympic Games were very much an amateur affair. They were however the first Olympic Games that saw athletes receive medals for finishing first, second, and third.
They were not a Games that were well-attended by the other sporting nations across the globe. Of the 617 athletes taking part 525 were American. Of the remaining 92 athletes, 41 were Canadian.
Unlike the current format of the Olympic Games events in 1904 they were spread out over several months. Gymnastics was also split over two dates. The International Turners’ Championship as it was named was held on July 1–2. This included the all-around, triathlon, and team events. The Olympic Gymnastics Championships, were held on October 29. This comprised of seven individual apparatus events and the combined event.
George aged 33 competed in both events, and did not perform too well in the first. He was however to write himself into the record books at the second event.
On October 29, he won 6 medals in a single day. He won three gold medals in the parallel bars, long horse vault, and 25-foot rope climbing, two silver in the pommel horse and 4-event all-around, and one bronze on the horizontal bar.
George also participated in some track and field events, which was not uncommon for gymnasts in that era. It was reported as being remarkable though for a one legged gymnast. In the 12-event All-Around competition he placed 71st individually despite having finished 10th in the nine event all-around.
There have been many sports historians who have tried to remove George Eyser from the record books claiming that the event in St Louis was not an authentic competition, but the International Olympic Committee has stood by the results and Eyser rightly has his place in the History books.
To give his performance credence it should be noted that he went on to win medals in international meets in 1908 in Frankfurt, Germany and in 1909 in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Eyser was the first amputee to compete at an Olympic Games. He was the first to compete with an artificial leg. There would not be another athlete compete in the Olympic games with a prosthetic leg for 104 years. In 2008 the second athlete with a prosthetic leg Natalie du Toit, a swimmer from South Africa competed in the 10 kilometre swim. In London four years later another South African, ran in the 400-metres on carbon-fiber prosthetics, double-amputee Oscar Pistorius.
The technology of prosthetics has come a long way since Eyser’s day and one wonders what George could have achieved today.
Eyser passed away in 1919 at the age of 48. Many sporting historians have tried to find out what happened to George after his Gymnastic feats of 1909, but have been unable to find any record of him. There is no record as to how he died, whether he married or if he had any children.
For a man who migrated to America, lost his leg at a young age but still managed to excel in the word of sport this is sad. He is one of only 24 athletes to have won six Olympic medals at a single Olympic Games. Two have won eight in a single Games with Michael Phelps achieving that milestone twice, and eight athletes have won seven in a single Games. It seems remarkable that we know so little about this man after he left his indelible mark.
