Snapshot 19xx – The Youngest Olympic Gold Medalist EVER!

December 9, 2024 by  
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Without searching the internet (or scrolling to see the images below), who do you think is the youngest Olympic athlete to ever win a gold medal in an individual event (i.e., not a team sport or relay)? If you are unsure, would you guess the youngest to be a male or female? How about their country… or the event (sport) tin which they competed?

I purposely left out the year in the heading – otherwise some might have guessed Nadia Comaneci (she is actually ranked as the 7th youngest) or Klaus Zerta (who comes in at #2 and remains the youngest male). We found a newspaper with a report in a New York Times dated August 13, 1936 telling of 13-year-old Marjorie Gestring (13 years, 267 days) who still holds the top spot.

Note: There is a younger female (also 13, but 180 days younger), but she (Kim Yun-Mi) won her gold medal as a member of a relay team.

Details: Marjorie was a springboard diver from the United States who earned her Olympic gold in the 3-meter woman’s event in Berlin – the infamous games in where Jesse Owens (along with others) put a crimp in Hitler’s efforts to demonstrate the superiority of German genetics. To add to the check-back, the games were the first to be televised.

The following is a photo of the coverage of Marjorie’s accomplishment:

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Filed under: Great Headlines, Newspaper Collecting Ideas, Noteworthy Issues, Sports, The 20th & 21st Centuries, The Collectible Community
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