Wisconsin athletes have had some unforgettable moments at the Summer Olympics

As the 2024 Olympics get started in Paris, many Wisconsinites will get their chance to shine on the international stage. Will any come away with medals, like Kenny Bednarek's silver or Molly Seidel's bronze in 2021? Perhaps it will mark the second straight Olympics with a Wisconsin-connected athlete winning gold in men's basketball after Bucks players Khris Middleton and Jrue Holiday turned the feat in 2021, mere weeks after winning the NBA crown.

Perhaps this year's athletes will join others on this list as some of the most memorable summer Olympics moments featuring Wisconsin athletes.

First, a caveat: Wisconsin has left its mark time and again in the Winter Olympics, from speedskating (Eric Heiden, Bonnie Blair, Dan Jansen) to the Miracle on Ice (Mark Johnson, Bob Suter) to women's hockey (numerous Badgers who won medals) and even curling (Matt Hamilton), but this will focus on the Summer Games.

Suzy Favor Hamilton falls down

The decorated distance runner from Stevens Point was looking to become the first American to win a track and field event at the Olympics longer than 400 meters since 1972, competing in the 1,500 meters, but she lost two leads during the race and stumbled 100 meters shy of the finish line. What we didn't know then was that the 11-time WIAA state champion and nine-time NCAA champion at Wisconsin had fallen on purpose to avoid the embarrassment of finishing out of the medals.

She battled bipolar disorder, and an explosive story in 2012 detailed how she became a Las Vegas escort, trying to cope with the misdiagnosis that had led her to a prescription for antidepressants that amplified her manic episodes. She has since reclaimed her life and become a motivational speaker and author. She never medaled but did appear in three Olympics.

Paul Hamm wins gold ... but has to wait

The Waukesha native won the men's gymnastics all-around title in 2004 at the games in Athens and also came away with two silvers, including on the high bar and with the men's team, sharing the stage with twin brother Morgan. But he had to wait to lay claim to the biggest prize, and it was part of a massive Olympics controversy.

His narrow win (.012 points) in the all-around standings was called into question over a scoring issue; the international gymnastics federation believed South Korean bronze medalist Yang Tae-Young was incorrectly given a lower start value on his routine in the parallel bars, an error that potentially accounted for the difference between bronze and gold.

Did South Korea wage a protest too late, waiting until after the medals were assigned? Should Hamm give his medal back if it's discovered the scoring issue really did impact results? Could Hamm have adjusted his own routine if he knew, in real time, what Tae-Young's score had been?

The ultimate outcome was that judges were suspended, the gymnastics scoring system was altered for future games, but the result wasn't changed. The Court of Arbitration for Sports, releasing their ruling two months after the end of the Olympics following a hearing in Switzerland, set the results in stone, saying, "An error identified with the benefit of hindsight, whether admitted or not, cannot be a ground for reversing a result of a competition."

Alvin Kraenzlein does something legendary, but almost gets punched for it

Alvin Kraenzlein, raised in Milwaukee and briefly a student at the University of Wisconsin, who won four gold medals in individual track events in the 1900 Games in Paris and remains the only athlete to win four track titles in individual events (no relays) at a single Games. Under the tutelage of pioneering coach Mike Murphy at Penn, Kraenzlein developed the lead-leg approach to running hurdles that we see today, and he won the 60-meter dash, 110-meter high hurdles, 200-meter low hurdles and the long jump, setting records along the way, although there was some controversy.

Fellow American Meyer Prinstein, a world-record holder in the long jump who had several legendary battles with Kraenzlein, was the favorite in that event. He joined all the Americans on the track team in a gentleman's agreement not to compete on Sunday, when the French had scheduled the event over the protest of USA officials who felt that disrespected the Sabbath. Kraenzlein competed anyway, to Prinstein's fury. Prinstein, who competed for Syracuse (tied to the Methodist church) and was strictly forbidden to participate on Sundays, even supposedly tried to punch Kraenzlein.

George Poage makes history as first Black man to win Olympic medal

The La Crosse resident became the first Black man to win an Olympic medal. The University of Wisconsin runner entered the 1904 Games in St. Louis as a member of Milwaukee Athletic Club.

He didn't make the finals in the 60 meters, beaten by "Milwaukee Meteor" Archibald Hahn (born in Dodgeville), who would later take the gold and win two other events in that games (200 and 100), and he finished sixth in the 400, but then he landed the bronze in the 400-meter hurdles (with another Wisconsinite, Frank Waller of Menomonee Falls, taking silver).

Joseph Stadler of Cleveland later won a silver in the high jump that same day, so Poage's pioneering was only brief; Stadler became the second Black man to medal at the Olympics. Poage would add another bronze in the 200-meter hurdles.

The 1904 Olympics was big for Wisconsinites. In addition to Poage and Hahn, weightlifter Oscar Osthoff, who grew up in Milwaukee and Elkhart Lake, won gold in the all-around dumbbell and silver in the two-hand lift. He later played football at Marquette University and then transferred to Wisconsin, where he also competed in gymnastics, swimming and track and field and later became a structural engineer in Milwaukee and had a role in constructing the Milwaukee County Courthouse and Lincoln Memorial Bridge. Jerome Steever (Milwaukee) won silver in water polo, Frank Waller (Menomonie) won two silvers in in the 400 meters and 400 hurdles, and Emil Breitkreutz (Wausau) won bronze in the 800, as did Philip Schuster (Gillett) with the gymnastics team.

Ralph Metcalfe joins Jesse Owens in an unforgettable Olympic moment

The 1936 Games in Berlin are synonymous to Americans with Jesse Owens, a Black man who stared down Adolf Hitler and the ruling Nazi Party by winning four gold medals. But Ralph Metcalfe has a place in that story, too, running on the 4x100-meter relay that netted himself his only Olympic gold and helped Owens lay claim to a fourth.

Metcalfe won three other Olympic medals — a silver in the 100 in 1936, and a silver in the 100 and bronze in the 200 in 1932, although the 100 finish in 1932 was controversial. Eddie Tolan and Metcalfe appeared to finish in a dead heat, but Tolan was declared the winner. The bronze was also mired in controversy; Metcalfe's lane had been measured incorrectly, and though he was offered a chance to re-run the race, he declined since it could have negated the 1-2-3 finish in the event by USA runners.

That was followed by the silver in 1936 in the 100, second only to Owens. The Marquette University alumnus was then subbed into the 4x100 with Owens and set a world record of 39.8 seconds.

Ben Sheets on the hill for an unforgettable upset

To call Sheets a Wisconsin athlete is a stretch. He'd been drafted by the Milwaukee Brewers in 1999 and was technically in the pipeline when the 2000 Olympics rolled around, but the Louisiana native hadn't yet appeared in the big leagues. He would, of course, go on to become a member of the franchise's Walk of Fame, but in 2000, Major League Baseball wasn't allowing big-leaguers yet to appear in the Olympics, so the USA team was mostly minor-leaguers and ex-players.

Sheets took the hill in the gold-medal game against clear-cut favorite Cuba, a two-time reigning gold medalist and a squad that had never been beaten in the Olympics. But Sheets threw a complete-game, three-hit shutout, and memorably fell to his knees on the mound with his arms in the air as the United States prevailed for gold.

Gwen Jorgensen wins triathlon gold in Rio

Waukesha's Gwen Jorgensen had gone to London in 2012 as a potential gold medalist in the triathlon, but a flat tire derailed that dream and shifted the focus to Rio de Janeiro four years later. She moved to Australia to train, intent on winning gold, and when her chance came, she took it. Jorgensen traversed the 1.5-kilometer swim, 38.5-kilometer bike ride and 10-kilometer run and emerged with gold.

It was a spiritual predecessor to what Molly Seidel did in 2021 , becoming just the third U.S. woman to win a medal in the marathon when she took the bronze. The former distance-running standout at University Lake School in western Waukesha County won four cross country championships and eight WIAA track titles during her time in Wisconsin, then won the NCAA cross-country title for Notre Dame and three track and field crowns.

Chellsie Memmel fights through broken ankle for gymnastics

West Allis native Chellsie Memmel, today a coach for Team USA gymnastics, had already missed the 2004 Olympics with a foot injury, but she was determined to fight through another serious ailment to bring a medal back, and that's exactly what happened.

The Americans took silver in 2008, with Memmel still contributing on the uneven bars despite the broken ankle, an injury whose full severity was revealed after the Olympics.

Peterson brothers perform a reverse

They were the perfect Olympic story, brothers raised on a dairy farm in tiny Comstock, Wisconsin, who each came away with a gold medal, albeit in different Olympics. Ben and John Peterson have been connected in history ever since, even entering the United World Wrestling Hall of Fame together.

The younger brother got his gold medal first. The Cumberland High School alumnus Ben Peterson, a two-time NCAA wrestling champion at Iowa State, won gold in 1972 in Munich while competing at 90 kilograms in freestyle wrestling. John (who attended UW-Stout and was two years older than Ben) meanwhile settled for silver at 82 kilograms.

Then, the roles flipped. In 1976 during the Montreal Olympics , it was John who won gold and Ben who claimed silver.

Special thanks to Jessie Garcia's 2016 book, "Going for Wisconsin Gold: Stories of Our State Olympians” in helping to compile this article.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin athletes have had some unforgettable moments at the Summer Olympics