A Brief History of Dartmouth College in the Olympics

Dartmouth owns a long and storied history of sending athletes to the Olympics, starting in 1908 when Arthur B. Shaw ’08 won a bronze medal in the 110-meter hurdles at the Games of the Fourth Olympiad in London. Since then, Dartmouth has sent over 150 athletes to the Games, including all but one Summer Olympics since 1908 and to every Winter Olympics since the founding on the Winter Games in 1924. 

Through 2010, Dartmouth athletes have claimed 28 gold, 22 silver and 13 bronze medals.

Unfortunately, for Dartmouth’s impressive Olympic history, there is no single, easily accessible, easily searchable, record of Dartmouth Olympians, their involvements and their performances. Students interested in the history of Dartmouth at the Olympics must rely on a scattering of articles released by Dartmouth Now, U.S. News & World Report and press releases from the Dartmouth Athletics Department.

Normally, those sources provide satisfactory coverage for readers but there is a surprising amount of inconsistency and incompleteness. The Athletics Department press releases provide the most complete record of Dartmouth Olympians, but the ones they have published, when pieced together, reveal a partial list of athletes and events. Not enough medals are listed to correlate with the amount claimed, not all events are listed, etc.

Only one known collection of first-hand accounts from Dartmouth Olympians exists, a 2013 Masters Thesis written by Jennifer Titus Johnson. Johnson also made it clear that there was a stunning lack of documentation and data collection.

Her thesis currently resides in Rauner library, waiting for a single page to be reprinted so that the entire work can be bound. Until then, it sadly remains a pile of unbound paper. Its one saving grace? Any student interested in reading personal recollections regarding Dartmouth’s Olympic history can read it during Rauner’s open hours.

Despite the lack of a clear history, Dartmouth deserves a lot of credit for the assistance it provides to Olympic athletes. In all actuality, Dartmouth’s assistance in ensuring education for athletes is more important than documenting their performances.

One of the many ways Dartmouth has supported athletes is the so-called “15-year plan,” which allows athletes the flexibility to take numerous off-terms to train and participate in the games. Some winter sport athletes take classes during the spring and take off-terms during the fall, winter and summer.

According to her thesis, Johnson indicated many Dartmouth Olympians are thankful that Dartmouth didn’t force them to choose between their Olympic dreams or completing their education. Many lament that nowadays, young athletes are forced to choose one or the other.

Furthermore, athletes are provided superior training facilities, excellent coaching and a natural environment conducive for Winter Olympics practice. 

Aided by the Dartmouth Skiway, Dartmouth is considered a premier college for aspiring winter Olympians. A 2010 U.S. News & World Report article called the Dartmouth Ski Team “a pipeline of Olympic talent,” in part because “the program’s leaders have strongly encouraged their student-athletes to focus on school while still maintaining their athletic careers.” 

Laurel Anderson ’14, a Cross-Country skier, agrees that Dartmouth is a great location for prospective Olympic skiers.

“The Dartmouth Ski Team has a great record of sending athletes to the Olympics,” Anderson explained. “Two of the cross-country skiers going to Sochi are women I skied with as a freshman and sophomore, and several of our top skiers each year have opted to continue racing professionally, and that’s not counting the biathletes. The coaches work hard to make sure everyone on the team can do every workout, despite any conflicts with classes or labs. Dartmouth professors are usually very accommodating when it comes to missing class for races.”

In return for its efforts, Dartmouth holds the distinction of most Olympic appearances out of all the Ivies with 110 appearances in the Winter Games. Harvard, the next closest Ivy, has just 71 appearances.

However, here occurs some disagreement depending on which news source you read. Dartmouth College claims 110 appearances, but IvyLeagueSports.com indicates Dartmouth has 124 Olympic alumni. Additional disagreement also occurs regarding Harvard’s numbers as U.S. News reported Harvard has 77 athletes with Olympic appearances. 

Overall, Dartmouth Olympians have represented 15 different countries, most playing for the United States or Canada. Other countries include Great Britain, Japan, Bermuda, Norway, Switzerland, Argentina, New Zealand, France and Italy. 

Many Dartmouth Olympians never had the opportunity to participate in the games despite having qualified. Instead, world events have changed the lives of many athletes. 

Ten Dartmouth Olympians, in men’s hockey and men’s skiing, never when the 1940 Helsinki Winter games were cancelled due to World War II. 

Six other athletes, including the Geer sisters, were prohibited from the 1980 Moscow Summer games when President Jimmy Carter boycotted the games in response to Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan. All six athletes would have competed in crew.

Luckily for Carlie Geer ’80 and Julia Geer ’75, they both had second chances to compete. 

Julia competed in two other Olympics, but even if she had been able to participate in the 1980 games, she still wouldn’t have surpassed Cameron Myler ’92 for the most Olympics appearances. Myler competed in four consecutive Winter Games from 1988 to 1998. 

Carlie would become the first Dartmouth woman to win a medal, taking silver in crew at the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. It wouldn’t be for another 14 years, at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, that another woman would win a medal. Gretchen Ulion ’94 and Sarah Tueting ’98 won the gold medal that year with the U.S. women’s hockey team, becoming the first Dartmouth women to win a medal in the Winter Games. 

Shaw was the first Dartmouth athlete to win a medal, while John Shea ’34 (gold – speed skating), Robert Minton ’26 (bronze - bobsled) and Douglas Everett ’26 (silver - hockey) were the first men to win medals in a Winter Olympics during the 1932 winter games in Lake Placid. Shea actually won two gold medals, making him the first multi-medal winner for Dartmouth. 

Shea holds the distinction being the only non-hockey ice skater from Dartmouth to compete despite Dartmouth’s reputation as a superior location for prospective Winter Olympians. No figure skater and no other speed skater has appeared in the games before or after Shea.

Jojo Miller ’14, one of Dartmouth’s leading figure skaters, believes there are several different factors explaining the lack of Dartmouth Olympic non-hockey skaters, such as physical abilities and time prioritization.

“Girls hit their prime in their late teens and early twenties,” Miller continued. “Michelle Kwan stopped competing when he was 26, which is considered 'old' in skater years. Men hit their prime a few years later. Our current champion, Jeremy Abbott, is 28 and is planning on retiring after the Olympics. The guy who came in second is 18-Jeremy is considered really old. So pretty much, by the time people are graduating college, that's the age where skaters have stopped competing.” 

The amount of time spent training to become an Olympic-caliber figure skater would jeopardize a student’s academics. But focusing on academics ruins the opportunity to become an Olympic skater.

“Skating is an all-or-nothing sport,” Miller explained. “You can’t be doing school if you want to be good enough to go to the Olympics. You have to be at the training facilities with the top coaches and best skaters, like in Colorado Springs or Boston. All the best skaters devote most of their days to training on and off the ice, and you can't do that at Dartmouth. There’s no way you could come to Dartmouth, graduate, and go on to train for the Olympics like hockey skaters or skiers. They have way longer shelf lives to be able to do that than figure skaters. With skating, you have to be going full force with it by the right coaches and facilities until you stop competing to be Olympian worthy.”

Dartmouth women’s hockey can make a strong argument for having the best athletic program that produces Olympic talent and medal winners.

Cherie Piper ’06 and Gillian Apps ’06 were members of the gold medal-winning Canadian woman’s hockey team. They both earned points when Canada routed Slovakia 18-0 as the Canadians outshot the Slovakians 67-9. Piper registered a goal and an assist while Apps had two assists.

The 18-point differential was the largest margin of victory in the history of Olympic women’s hockey, which has been an event since 1998.

The Canadian women’s hockey team won gold after taking out Switzerland 10-1, Sweden 13-1, Finland 5-0 and the United States 2-0. 

The 2010 gold medal was Piper’s third and Apps’ second. Apps and Piper won a gold medal in the 2006 Torino Winter Games and Piper won her first gold medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Games. Interestingly, Piper’s Canadian team defeated Tueting’s U.S. team in the Americans’ bid for a second consecutive gold.

Although women’s hockey possesses the most medals for an Olympic sport, men’s hockey has had its fair share of Olympic representation, including eight players on the 1948 American hockey team.

Current men’s hockey players value the legacy their predecessors have left behind.

“It’s awesome,” Geoff Ferguson ’16 said. “We just got to try and live up to the tradition and respect the place and respect the program, and just look up to those guys and try to get better.”

Still, players are mindful to not lock themselves in the past and always towards the future.

“We try to do our own thing,” Ferguson said. “Obviously those guys paved the way for us and we can try to follow the path and use Dartmouth to improve like they did.”

During the most recent Olympic Games in London two years ago, Dartmouth was represented by four alumni – Sean Furey ’04 (javelin), Evelyn Stevens ’05 (road cycling), Eric Storck ’07 (sailing-49er class) and Anthony Fahden ’08 (lightweight crew-men’s four). 

Abbey D’Agostino ’14 and Ben True ’08 barely missed out on the 2012 games for the 5,000-meter race. 

Nine Dartmouth athletes qualified for the Vancouver Olympics, the most recent Winter Games, in 2010. Athletes from Dartmouth have participated in the Olympics as early as the 1920 Summer Games in Antwerp.

Dartmouth’s connection to the Vancouver games ran even deeper than athletic participation. The former Vancouver mayor who helped lure the games to the city was Gordon Campbell ’69, and Scott Blackmun ’79 was designated the U.S. Olympic Committee CEO during the games. Several more Dartmouth alumni assisted with the games in varying capacities.

It remains to be seen how current potential Dartmouth Olympians will perform in the upcoming Sochi Olympics and build upon Dartmouth’s heritage. Currently, 25 Dartmouth athletes are striving to qualify for the 2014 Winter games and carve their own legacy into Dartmouth’s Olympic history.