George Eyser

George Louis Eyser, born on 31 August 1870 in Kiel, Germany, was a German-American gymnast who competed in the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis. On a single day, 29 October, he won six medals: gold in the parallel bars, long horse vault and 25 foot rope climb, silver in the pommel horse and the four-event all-around and bronze on the horizontal bar. He competed with a wooden prosthesis for his left leg, having lost it when a train ran over him, and his vault was then an event that included a jump over a long horse without a springboard. His family emigrated when he was fourteen and he took United States citizenship in 1894; he worked as a bookkeeper in St. Louis and trained with the Concordia Turnverein, with which he kept competing after the Games. He died in Denver on 6 March 1919.