On the eve of the Paris Paralympics as we wait to witness some incredible performances, perhaps we should cast our minds back to the games of the third Olympiad in St Louis Missouri USA in 1904, when America’s George Eyser secured six medals, three of them gold, in one single day.

A remarkable achievement in itself, but what makes Eyser’s performance more incredible is the fact that he did it wearing a ‘wooden leg’, thus making him the games’ first amputee and who many would therefore class as the first true ‘Paralympic Champion’, fifty six years before the Paralympics was officially established.

The ‘wooden leg’, which was attached above the knee and had a carved foot.
Source: Author’s Collection

Born in Germany in 1870, Eyser’s family emigrated to the USA in the mid 1880’s settling in St Louis, which had a large German population, who were supposedly lured there by the ‘Geisson Emigration Society’ which described it as ‘The American Rhineland.’

As a young boy he lost his left leg in train accident,but it did not deter him from taking a strong interest in gymnastics and he became a member of the Concordia Club, which focused on the German sport of ‘Turnverein’ or ‘Turning’, which involved tumbling and athletic manoeuvres on bars and vaulting horses.

George Eyser( centre) as part of The Concordia Club circa 1904
Source:Author’s Collection

He was selected to represent the club (who in turn represented the USA) at the 1904 games in his home city performing poorly in the early floor competitions  which took place in July.

However, the 1904 Games was stretched out over four months to coincide with The World’s Fair, splitting the gymnastics into two, so when the apparatus were introduced in October, Eyser won three Gold medals, two Silvers and one Bronze (1904 was the first year that the three medal categories were introduced) in one single day.

The 1904 St Louis Olympics took place alongside ‘The World’s Fair’.
Source: Author’s collection

He was awarded gold medals on the parallel bars, the vault and the rope-climbing, silvers on the pommel horse and the team ‘combined event’ and a bronze on the horizontal bar, where he capitalised on his upper-body strength and technical gymnastic ability.

In the team ‘combined event’ on the parallel bars
Source: Author’s Collection

Gymnastics was very popular amongst German-Americans at this time and when German immigration was at its peak in the 1880’s, hundreds of ‘Turnverein Societies’ were formed all over the country, ‘For the purpose of cultivating health and vigour through gymnastics’; more than a dozen were established in St Louis alone and this form of gymnastics would continue as an Olympic event until 1920.

Eyser had a fierce rivalry with the able bodied Austrian-American Gymnast Anton Heida, who also secured six medals( five gold and one silver) at the games and the tension was heightened when there was a mix up with the medals, which The St Louis Dispatch reported on:

 The first prize was really won by George Eyser

Throughout the contests Heida and Eyser were close rivals and the championship was finally decided by the parallel bars competition, which Eyser won by one point, but through an error, Heida was awarded the gold and has held it despite the letters and protests from the AAU authorities

No-one knows if Heida ever gave it back.

It would be 1948 before Ludwig Guttman created the Stoke Mandeville Games in Buckinghamshire for a group of disabled ex servicemen, eventually leading to the first ‘Paralympic Games’ in 1960 in Rome, so Eyser was way ahead of his time in 1904 as a disabled athlete competing on the international stage.

Today, he is remembered as one of an illustrious group of ‘multi -medallists’ at one single games, which include swimmers Michael Phelps (8 in 2008), Mark Spitz (7 in 1972), Ian Thorpe (5 in 2000) and only recently Leon Marchand 5 in 2024) and the sprinters, Jesse Owens (4 in 1936) and Carl Lewis (4 in 1984), but George Eyser still remains the only person to win all his medals on one single day.

There were further successes for Eyser in international competition in 1908 and 1909, but he could never improve upon his performances at the St Louis games and sadly he would pass away in 1919 at the age of 48, but arguably his legacy did live on at future Olympic games.

To date, there have been two further amputees who have competed at the ‘able bodied’ games wearing prosthetics: swimmer Natalie du Toit of South Africa in 2016 and perhaps the most high profile disabled athlete Oscar Pistorius the double-amputee nicknamed, ‘The Blade Runner,’ who competed at the London games in 2012 on carbon-fibred prosthetics.

Roy Tomazowa wrote in 2016

However, it is George Eyser of this incredible trio of athletes, who stands alone as the first Olympic Champion’, which in turn, also makes him the first true Paralympic Champion

George Eyser Olympic Champion (1870-1919)
Source: Author’s Collection

Article Copyright of Bill Williams