Eric Heiden's Five Golds at the Speed Skating Oval
Near Lake Placid, New York
Just outside the Olympic Center, along Main Street, lies the speed skating oval where a twenty one year old from Wisconsin turned in one of the greatest individual performances in Olympic history. His name was Eric Heiden, and at the nineteen eighty games he entered all five men's speed skating events, from the sprint of five hundred meters all the way up to the grueling ten thousand meters. He won every single one.
Five races, five gold medals, five Olympic records, and a world record in the longest event. No athlete, in any sport, had ever won five individual gold medals at a single Olympic Games, summer or winter, and Heiden did it wearing a now iconic golden racing suit. What makes the feat even stranger is that these five events demand completely different bodies and skills, the explosive power of a sprinter and the deep endurance of a distance racer, rarely found in the same person.
Heiden, famously humble, seemed almost embarrassed by the attention and soon walked away from skating to become a competitive cyclist and later an orthopedic surgeon. The outdoor oval where he made history traces its lineage all the way back to the nineteen thirty two games, and in winter you can still skate on it yourself.
