Rochester athletes have been winning medals at the Summer Olympics since 1924

One hundred years ago this month, Bill Cox came home from Paris, a true Olympian.

The Rochester native had been a member of the bronze medal winning 3,000-meter team. He was one of four runners from the U.S. whose finish was high enough to edge out a team from France for third place.

Thus, Cox became the first person from Rochester to medal in a Summer Olympic Games.

The games are back in Paris now, athletes representing their countries and, of course, their hometowns.

Rochester has been well-represented in the Summer Olympics. A review of this paper’s ever-growing list of Remarkable Rochesterians shows 17 people who also had connections to the summer games.

It’s a varied group that, among others, includes runners like Cox, a swimmer, a diver, a soccer player, sibling fencers (the Zimmermann sisters), and a rower who will count 2024 as her fourth games.

To compete in the Olympics, much less to win, sets athletes apart, makes them heroes in their communities.

So, it was no surprise that the 20-year-old Cox had to shrug off a warm welcome upon arriving from France.

“It seems to me that I have had too much honor,” he told the Democrat and Chronicle upon arrival. “More than I deserve.”

He went on to single out two people for praise, Edward Smith, his trainer at the YMCA, and Henry Clune, the Democrat and Chronicle columnist.

Clune, a fan of track and field, had recognized Cox’s talent three years earlier and had encouraged him to stay with running. (Cox preferred swimming, and he would go on to be a lifeguard in the summer for decades).

The columnist was also married to an Olympian, Charlotte Boyle Clune, a New York City native and world-record holder in swimming who had competed in the 1920 games in Belgium.

The couple had married in 1921 after a whirlwind courtship and then settled in Rochester and then Scottsville. Charlotte went on to train hundreds, probably, thousands of young swimmers, and, though she was New Yorker by birth, she certainly deserves to be on the list of Remarkable Rochesterians.

Perhaps Henry Clune, who lived to be 105 and is a Remarkable Rochesterian because of his writing, should also be recognized for his devotion to Olympic sports.

When Karl Warner, then of Yale University but later of the Eastman Kodak Co., won a gold medal in 1932 games in Los Angeles, Clune, of course, was there. He would call Warner “champ” whenever they bumped into each other.

Fun fact: There’s a rugby player among the Rochester Remarkables. Yes, rugby.

The 1924 Games were the last in which rugby union (15 players) was offered in the Olympics. Rugby with seven players was introduced in 2016.

Alan Valentine was a player and a coach on the gold-medal winning Rugby team in 1924.

A native of Glen Cove in Long Island, at age 34, in 1934, Valentine became the youngest person to be the president of the University of Rochester. He served in that post until 1949, taking some time out to oversee the implementation of the Marshall Plan in Europe.

Abby Wambach, the Pittsford native and Our Lady of Mercy High School graduate, is perhaps the most famous of the Rochester Olympians. She led two gold medal teams, 2004 and 2012, and she was on the 2015 World Championship team.

Like Wambach, Megan Musnicki, who grew up in Naples, Ontario County, has two gold medals, having been a member of the women’s eight-person rowing team in 2012 and 2016. She competed in the 2020 Olympics, but the team did not medal. At age 41, she’s on the team again in this year’s Olympics.

A series of runners followed in Bill Cox’s footsteps, including the sprinter Trent Jackson, the marathoner Pete Pfitzinger and the hurdler Kim Batten.

In 1995, Batten, a world-record holder in her event, but not yet an Olympian, visited with Cox, who was then 91 and a resident of Wesley-on-East nursing home in Rochester. Batten’s mother, Ella, worked at the home, as had Batten while she attended East High School.

Batten asked Cox for his autograph. “Maybe some of the medal stuff will rub off on me,” she said, handing him a pen and paper.

It did. The next year, Batten won a silver medal in the games in Atlanta.

Bill Cox died in June 1996 at age 91, just before the summer games that year.

Were he still alive, he would probably give this year’s competitors the same advice he gave Batten. “As long as you’re out in front, you’re all right,” he said. “Get out and stay out.”

Remarkable Rochesterians connected to the Summer Olympics

Here, then, in birth year order, are the summer Olympians on the list of Remarkable Rochesterians :

Charlotte Boyle Clune (1899-1990): Represented the U.S. in the 1920 games in Belgium, competing in the 100-meter freestyle. A native of New York City, she set 21 U.S. and/or World records including records in the now-forgotten plunge for distance. She also was credited with being one of the popularizers of making six kicks per arm cycle, rather than two or four. After her marriage to columnist Henry Clune in 1921 she settled in the Rochester area and coached swimming for years.

Alan Valentine (1901-1989:) In 1924, he played for and helped coached the Olympic champion United States rugby team, winning the gold in Paris, upsetting France in the final. The president of the University of Rochester from 1935 to 1949, he graduated from Swarthmore College, where he played football, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in England. In 1948 he took a leave from the UR presidency to help implement the Marshall Plan to rebuild Western Europe.

William Cox (1904-1996): The Rochester native ran in the 1924 Summer Olympic games in Paris, winning a bronze medal in the 3,000-meter team event. He thus became the first Rochester native to win an Olympic event. He then became a star runner at Penn State University before returning to Rochester and teaching math at Edison Tech for 36 years. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, and he was a leader in Section V athletics for years and a lifeguard at Ontario Beach until he was 76.

Karl Warner (1908-1995): He ran the third leg in the 1,600-meter relay team that won a gold-medal in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, setting a world record that stood for 20 years.  A Connecticut native, after graduating from Yale University in 1934, he joined the Eastman Kodak Co., in Rochester, retiring as an assistant supervisor after 38 years. A resident of Irondequoit, he was longtime volunteer with the United Cerebral Palsy Association, serving on the state and national boards.

Betty Kalmn Perkins-Carpenter (1931-2018): She was an assistant for the U.S. Olympic Diving team at the 1972 games and coached the Turkish men’s and women’s team at the 1976 games. An undefeated diving champion at Benjamin Franklin High School in Rochester, she attended SUNY Cortland and served in the U.S. Air Force. She started the Perkins Swim Club in Penfield, coached at the University of Rochester and coached diver Wendy Wyland, the 1982 World gold medalist and the 1984 Olympic bronze medalist.

Trent Jackson (1942-2007): He competed in the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in the 100-meter dash, pulling a hamstring in the semi-finals.  A track and football standout, he was born in Georgia and starred in sports at Franklin High School, setting a national high school record in the 100-yard dash. He was a member of several teams at the University of Illinois and played in the National Football League before returning to Rochester, where he was a coach in the city school district for more than 30 years.

Dick Buerkle (1947-2020): He ran in the 5,000-meter race in the 1976 Olympics and qualified for the 1980 team that boycotted the Olympics in Moscow. The Rochester native and 1965 Aquinas Institute graduate set a world record (3:54.93) for the mile in 1978. He had previously excelled at Villanova University, where he first joined the track team as a non-scholarship athlete and went on to be a three-time NCAA All-American. He was a two-time winner of the Rochester Marathon.

Gloria Peek (1950- ): In 2012, she was an assistant U.S. boxing coach at the Olympic games, coaching both men and women, the first American woman to do this. She was counseling juveniles in Rochester in the 1980s when she started the Montgomery Boxing Club in the basement of a church. She continued to coach boxing here and nationally. A graduate of Geneva High School, Monroe Community College and State University of New York College at Cortland, she is also a veteran of the U.S. Navy.

Pete Pfitzinger (1957-): The Pittsford Sutherland High School graduate won the 1984 Summer Olympic trials in the marathon in dramatic fashion, pulling ahead of the favorite, Alberto Salazar, in the final seconds of a race that saw John Tuttle of Alfred, Allegany County, finish third. Then, Pfitzinger went on to finish 11th in the 1984 Olympic marathon in Los Angeles and 14th in the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea, the top American finisher in each race. A co-author of books on running, he lives in New Zealand.

Wendy Wyland VanDerWoude (1964-2003): She won a bronze medal in diving at the 1984 Olympic games, having won a gold medal at the 1982 World Championships. The Michigan native lived in Penfield as a young girl where she was coached by Betty Perkins-Carpenter. She moved to California as a teenager, but returned to Rochester in the 1990s and was coaching diving at Rochester Institute of Technology when she died in her sleep, having been bothered by migraine headaches for months.

Kim Batten (1969- ): A silver medalist in the 400-meter hurdles in the 1996 Olympic games, she competed, but did not medal, in the 2000 games. At East High School in Rochester, her primary sport was basketball, but she gained national recognition in track and field, especially as a triple jumper. At Florida State University, the Georgia native emerged as a star in the 400-meter hurdles. A six-time national champion in that event, she won a gold medal at the 1995 World Championships, setting a world record.

Felicia Zimmermann (1975-): A fencer, she competed in the women’s individual and the team foil in the 1996 and 2000 Olympics, having previously won the World Cup overall championship in the Under-20 category. Competing for Stanford University, she also won two NCAA championships, once in foil, once in epee. She went on to win the U.S National Foil championship four times. She grew up in Rush and graduated from School of the Arts in Rochester, and, with her sister, Iris, is in the U.S. fencing Hall or Fame.

Abby Wambach 1980-): A longtime player for the United States Womens Soccer Team, she was on the gold-medal Olympic teams in 2004 and 2012 and the 2015 World Championships. The Pittsford native starred in soccer at Our Lady of Mercy High School and for the University of Florida. and scored 184 international goals, a record. She was named player of the year in international soccer in 2012. Having played for the Western New York Flash and other teams, she retired at the end of 2015 and is in the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Iris Zimmermann (1981- ) She competed in the 2000 summer Olympics with her sister, Felicia, both just missing a medal in the team foil, and, representing Stanford University, she was the 2001 NCAA champion. Earlier, she won the world championship in the Under-17 category twice, and she won a bronze medal in the 1999 World Fencing Championships. She grew up in Rush and graduated from School of the arts, and, like her sister, is in the U.S. Fencing Hall of Fame.

Jenn Suhr (1982-): She won the silver medal in the pole vault in the 2008 Olympic summer games and the gold in the 2012 games. Born Jenn Stuczynski in Fredonia, Chautauqua County, she graduated from Roberts Wesleyan College in 2004, having starred in basketball and track and field. She also won the gold medal at the 2016 World Indoor Championships and was ranked No. 1 in U.S. women’s pole vault for several years.

Megan Musnicki (1983- ): As a member of the eight-person women’s team in rowing, she won a gold medal at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, rowed in the 2000 games and is on the team for the 2024 games. A native of Naples, Ontario County, she graduated from Canandaigua Academy in 2001 and took up rowing at St. Lawrence University before transferring to Ithaca College, where she was a first-team All-American in 2005, before joining then U.S. Women’s National Team in 2010. She has been on the winning team in the World Rowing Championships six times.

Ryan Lochte (1984-): The winner of six gold medals in swimming and 12 medals overall in four Olympics (2004-2016), he is the second-most decorated swimmer in Olympics history along with three others. only behind Michael Phelps. Born in Rochester, he lived in Bristol, Ontario County, and attended Bloomfield schools until he was 12 and moved to Florida. He won national titles while attending the University of Florida, and he won several gold medals at World Championships.

From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott, writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454

See all the Remarkable Rochesterians

Link to the Remarkable Rochesterians list: https://data.democratandchronicle.com/remarkable-rochesterians/

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Rochester athletes have been winning medals at the Summer Olympics since 1924