George Lyon

George Seymour Lyon was a Canadian amateur golfer, born on July 27, 1858 in Richmond, Canada West, near Ottawa, and died on May 11, 1938 in Toronto. He worked in the insurance industry and first made his name in cricket, representing Canada eight times as a batsman. He took up golf only at the age of 38, yet eight years later he won the gold medal in golf at the 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis at age 46, beating the American Chandler Egan. He won the Canadian Amateur Championship a record eight times between 1898 and 1914 and the Canadian Seniors' Golf Association Championship ten times between 1918 and 1930. He lost the final of the 1906 U.S. Amateur and, when golf was dropped from the 1908 London Games, refused the gold medal offered to him by default. He was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1955 and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1971.