In the first century of the modern Olympics, only seven athletes with Kansas connections have won individual gold medals.
Five of them represented the University of Kansas, and one each was from Kansas State and Emporia State.
AL OERTER, University of Kansas
Al Oerter, named by a panel of experts the sixth-greatest male Olympian in history, won the Olympic discus throw four times from 1956 to 1968.
Oerter was only 19 when he made the Olympic team, and he won his first gold, in the 1956 Melbourne games, just after his 20th birthday.
"It was highly unexpected, to say the least," Oerter said. "I was obviously much too young. I had never met, never even seen, any of the foreign competition. I didn't expect to do anything."
Oerter was never the favorite to win the Olympics, but in each case he not only won but also set an Olympic record.
His most difficult victory came in 1964 in Tokyo, he said, when he tore a section of cartilage in his rib cage six days before the competition.
"The physicians at that time told me I would not be able to compete," Oerter said in a telephone interview from his home in Florida.
"I had put in four years of work and just was not going to cheat myself of at least an attempt."
He was forced to pass on his sixth and last throw, with the outcome still in doubt.
"I had reached some pain threshold I could not get beyond," he said -- but his fifth attempt proved to be the winning toss.
Oerter retired at age 32, after the Mexico City games, to spend more time with his young children.
He returned to competition 10 years later and in 1980 threw a lifetime best of 227 feet, 11 inches -- 15 feet beyond his best Olympic toss -- in the year that President Jimmy Carter kept U.S. athletes out of the Moscow games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
BILLY MILLS, Haskell and University of Kansas
Billy Mills, from the University of Kansas and a high-school graduate of what is now Haskell Indian Nations University, won the 1964 10,000-meter run in Tokyo in one of the great upsets in Olympic history.
Mills came from behind in a furious sprint to beat world record holder Ron Clarke.
The first four runners all broke the Olympic record, and Track & Field News reported that "Mills smashed the greatest field in history."
Mills today recalls that as a youngster he had read that the ancient Greeks believed the Olympic champions were chosen by the gods.
"I liked that comment, and I wanted to be chosen by the gods," he said. Mills lives in Fair Oaks, Calif., and often gives speeches to business, youth and college groups.
"The Olympic games have such an incredible history to them," he said. "People who follow the NBA or major league baseball just have no idea."
KENNY HARRISON, Kansas State University
Kenny Harrison set Olympic and American records and beat the world record holder in winning the triple jump gold medal in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.
Harrison said people had told him he was too small to be a successful triple jumper.
"Coaches said I was too short to triple jump far; that I would never amount to anything," the 5-foot-10, 145-pound Harrison said when he was training for the Atlanta games.
"That was the main driving force."
Harrison won the NCAA championship in 1986 as a sophomore at Kansas State, was the U.S. champion in 1990 and 1991 and won the world title in 1991.
Harrison was frequently injured during his career. He finished sixth in the 1992 Olympic trials, then had surgery for torn cartilage in his knee before coming back to win gold in Atlanta.
Harrison tried to defend his Olympic title this year but failed to qualify for the finals at the U.S. Olympic trial in July.
BILL NIEDER, Lawrence and University of Kansas
Bill Nieder overcame a serious injury and beat a two-time Olympic champion to win a gold medal in the shot put in the 1960 Rome Olympics.
Nieder was a great two-way football player at Lawrence High School, playing linebacker on defense and center on offense, but he suffered a career-ending knee injury against TCU in his first college game.
"He almost lost his leg," recalled Bill Mayer, who covered Kansas athletics in the 1950s for the Lawrence Journal-World. "He came back and worked and worked."
Nieder won the conference championship three times, then won a silver medal in the shot put in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
"He set his sights on becoming a gold medalist," Mayer said. "Al Oerter won a gold medal, and they were buddies."
But Nieder suffered further knee problems and finished fourth in the 1960 U.S. trials.
He was named as an alternate, and then got to compete in the Rome games after another shot putter was injured.
Nieder came through with a record performance, beating two-time Olympic champion Parry O'Brien and breaking O'Brien's Olympic record by more than 3 1/2 feet.
JIM BAUSCH, Garden Plain and University of Kansas
Jim Bausch, who set a world record in winning the 1932 Olympic decathlon, also lettered in football and basketball at Kansas.
'"Jarring Jim' Bausch, American all-around star from Kansas, late today captured the Olympic decathlon championship, smashing the world and Olympic records to bits," wrote Associated Press sports writer Alan Gould on Aug. 6, 1932.
'"Jarring Jim,' as he was known when he was a battering ram fullback for the University of Kansas Jayhawkers, never reached national prominence until this year, when he won the national championship in the final tryouts at Chicago with a record breaking performance," Gould wrote.
The Kansas City Star reported at the time that Bausch was supremely confident.
"A week before Bausch left for Los Angeles to appear in the Olympics, he walked into The Star office. What did he expect to do against the creme of the world's athletes? Big Jim was certain. 'I'll win that decathlon,' he said. 'And what's more, I'll break the record.' Jim was certain. And Jim did," The Star reported.
Bausch also lettered in basketball in 1930 and in football in 1929 and 1930.
The 1930 Kansas football team tied for the Big 6 title, and Bausch was a two-time all-conference selection.
Against Kansas State that year, Bausch ran the opening kickoff 98 yards for a touchdown and intercepted a pass and ran it back 68 yards for a touchdown. Bausch also kicked both extra points as Kansas won 14-0.
All three members of the 1932 U.S. decathlon team were from Lawrence, and they were coached by Kansas track coach Brutus Hamilton. Kansas teammate Clyde Coffman finished seventh, and Buster Charles, of Haskell, finished fourth after leading at the end of the first day.
Bausch was a charter selection to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1954.
PETE MEHRINGER, Kinsley and University of Kansas
Pete Mehringer joined Kansas teammate Jim Bausch as an Olympic gold medalist in the 1932 Los Angeles games.
Mehringer won the Olympic light-heavyweight wrestling title (about 191 pounds), including a win over the defending Olympic champion.
Mehringer, The Associated Press reported, "smashed T. Sjostedt, Sweden, to the mat after 13 minutes 37 seconds of torrid toiling. The American punished the 1928 Olympic games champion badly with leg and arm locks and then climaxed the match by lifting the big Swede into the air and slamming him into the floor."
Mehringer beat Eddie Scarf of Australia in the championship match to give the United States the wrestling team title.
Mehringer also was a Kansas football player from 1931-33 and was all-Big 6 at tackle his last two years. He played professional football from 1934-42.
JOHN KUCK, Wilson and Emporia State University
The first Kansas Olympic gold medalist was an Emporia State track athlete.
"The giant Kansan, John Kuck," The Associated Press reported in 1928, "shattered the world's shot put record with a heave of slightly over fifty-two feet."
AP called the 1928 competition in Amsterdam "the most amazing weight-tossing battle the world has ever seen."
"Never before in Olympic competition has 51 feet been approached nor had 52 feet been touched anywhere in actual contest, yet on the same afternoon, the three giants, two American and one German, had these figures groggy."
Kuck set collegiate records in the mid-1920s in the shot put and javelin while at Emporia State, then known as Kansas State Teachers College.
He broke the world record in the shot put three times before his Olympic victory in Amsterdam.
At Wilson High School, he set a national high school record in the shot put.
OLYMPIC NOTES: Thane Baker, a Kansas State sprinter, twice came close to individual gold, winning silver medals at 200 meters in 1952 and 100 meters in 1956. He also won a gold medal as a member of the 1956 400-meter relay team that set a world record.
The three great Kansas milers never won Olympic gold. Jim Ryun won the silver medal in the 1,500-meter run in the 1968 Mexico City games. He failed to qualify for the finals as a high-schooler in 1964 and again in 1972.
Wes Santee wasn't allowed to compete in the 1,500-meter run in the U.S. Olympic trials because he had already qualified for the team at 5,000 meters. In his prime, Santee was barred from the 1956 trials by the Amateur Athletics Union for reasons that were questionable then and irrelevant under today's rules.
Glenn Cunningham finished fourth at 1,500 meters in 1932 after leading on the last lap and won the silver medal in 1936 behind a world-record time.
Copyright 2000 By The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.