Raymond Ewry USA Photo ©: Chicago Historical Society

Raymond Clarence "Ray" Ewry (1873-1937) is one of the most successful olympic athletes of all times. He won 8 gold medals in three olympics which brings him into the top ten of all time gold winning athletes .

Raymond Ewry USA Photo ©: Chicago Historical Society

Ewry was born in Lafayette, Indiana, on 14th October 1873. As a boy he contracted polio putting him in a wheelchair for some time with doctors fearing that he would become paralysed and never able to walk. Ewry, however, overcame the illness by exercising his legs and finally managed to walk again. The continual leg training made him one of the best jumpers of all time. His speciality became the jump events where one is standing instead of running in advance of the jump. Ewry dominated the standing long jump, the standing triple jump and the standing high jump from the 1900 olympic games in Paris and untill the 1908 Olympics in London.

At his first Olympics, held in Paris (1900), he won gold medals in all three standing jumps. Incidentally, all three finals were held on the same day (July 16).

At the 1904 Summer Olympics, Ewry successfully defended all three of his titles. The standing triple jump event was discontinued after those Olympics, but Ewry continued to dominate the two remaining standing jump events at the 1908  Games. After these early Olympics when the standing jumps were considered a natural part of the olympic programme they were no longer held in the Olympics after 1912.

Ewry won a total of 8 olympic gold medals and in addition to this he won two inofficial olympic gold medals at the intercaleted games in Athens 1906 in addition to 15 AAU national championships in the period from 1898 to 1910.

Raymond Ewry's dominance is clear from the quality of his best results. His long jump world record of 3.47 m was still standing in the 1930s when the event gradually sized to exist. His world record in the standing high jump of 1,65 m  that was only beaten in 1936 by fellow american and double olympic gold winner in high jump Harold M. Osburn . Osburn lifted the bar to 1,68 m.

Raymond Ewry died on 29th September 1937.