Has anyone ever won gold medals at the Summer and Winter Olympics?

The simple answer is yes, they have.

In fact, two athletes have won gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics, although the first of them, Gillis Grafström, did so in the same discipline. At the Games of the VII Olympiad in Antwerp, Belgium in 1920, in the days before the Winter Olympics, Grafström won his first gold medal in men’s figure skating. Four years later, at the first Winter Olympics, or ‘International Winter Sports Week’ as the event was originally known, in Chamonix, France in 1924, he won his second in the same event. Just for good measure, Grafström also won a third consecutive gold medal in the same event at the second Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland in 1928. We are of course ‘going back’ a long way to find such an example. It was a different world back then, whereas today we have distractions like blockbuster movies and online pokies real money, back in the 1920’s more focus could be attributed to sports and the like.

However, in Olympic history, just one athlete has won gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympic Games. That athlete was Edward ‘Eddie’ Eagan who, at the 1920 Summer Olympics, defeated Norwegian opponent Sverre Sørsdal to win his first gold medal in the 175lb, light-heavyweight boxing division. Twelve years later, at the age of 34, Eagan competed as part of the USA I four-man bobsleigh team at the Winter Olympics in Lake Place, New York and duly collected his second Olympic gold medal. In the modern connected, world this combination or fortune and skill would likely be as well suited to online casinos usa, as it would an athletic endevour.