An Ivy Olympic Look at August 24
1920 — Yale’s Eddie Eagan — a future Rhodes Scholar — defeated Sverre Sorsdal of Norway in the final of the light heavyweight boxing final at the Antwerp Games. Twelve years later, Eagan (in the second seat in the photo) became the first person to claim gold at both the Summer and Winter Games when he was a member of the champion four-man bobsled team. No athlete has since matched his feat.
1954 — Anne Warner was born. Not only did she claim a bronze medal on the women’s rowing eight at the Montreal Games in 1976 with Cornell’s Marion Greig, Warner was one of the pioneers in the effort to see Title IX fully applied at Yale. Upon returning from representing their country, she and fellow Olympian Chris Ernst had had enough of the inequality in resources and facilities for the women athletes on campus. With Ernst spearheading the movement, the Yale crew staged a strip-in in the office of an associate athletic director which dramatically changed the course of sport at Yale. That story is told in the film A Hero For Daisy. In 1977, Warner would partner with other Ivy Leaguers to compete in the World Championships. She would team with Penn Law graduate Anita DeFrantz, later a member of the International Olympic Committee, to row in pairs using a new brand of oars developed by Brown graduate Dick Dreissigacker and his brother Peter.
1961 — Tiger Shaw, III, was born. Upon his retirement from alpine skiing, the New York Times wrote: “In his 10 years as the unquestioned leader of the United States Ski Team, Tiger Shaw, a man of such obvious talent and patience that he has been regarded as an extra coach, demonstrated just about everything it takes to be a champion except for the two things no ski champion can do without — reliable knees.” After four serious knee injuries, Shaw returned to Dartmouth for graduate business school. He then co-founded DealerWire, an inventory management system and trading network developed to help car dealers manage their vehicle inventories.
1970 — Sandra Whyte was born. A member of the first team to win a gold medal in women’s ice hockey in Nagano in 1998, Whyte helped usher the sport to new heights. Of the 31 Ivy Leaguers who have competed in Olympic women’s ice hockey, 17 have struck gold with either the U.S. (1998) or Canadian (2002 and 2006) squads. Whyte’s gold-medal-winning teammates in Nagano were Lisa Brown-Miller of Princeton, Katie King and Tara Mounsey of Brown, A.J. Mleczko and Angela Ruggiero of Harvard and Sarah Tueting and Gretchen Ulion of Dartmouth.
