If you are participating in an Olympic Games themed trivia night, one of the final questions might be “Who is the youngest person to win an Olympic Gold Medal?”. Seems a fairly straightforward question, you either know it or don’t. Or so you might think; it actually might be a bit more complex.
In probably THE most famous Olympic Games, 1936 Berlin, Marjorie Gestring won gold in the 3m Springboard event aged 13 years, 268 days. While there have been younger athletes to compete, and medal, at the Olympics, she remains the youngest to ever take home the gold. Or was she?
In the 1900 Olympics in Paris, the Dutch Men’s Pair had a quandary. Their cox, the person who steers the boat and shouts instructions, must have got stuck into the croissants (many such cases!) a little too much, and was deemed a disadvantage in the final. So François Brandt and Roelof Klein decided to drop their adult cox, and instead recruit, quite literally on the side of the river, a French boy as their cox. How you can have a foreign national compete on your team at the Olympics is farcical, but hey, it was a different time. With the much lighter cox, Brandt and Klein finished first, winning the gold medal. But as they paddled up to the podium, their cox rushed back into the crowd, and promptly disappeared.
He never claimed his gold medal, and his identity remains a mystery to this day. Eye-witnesses and photos identified the boy’s age to be between 7-10, but we will never know for sure.
You should get full marks if you answered the original question with Marjorie Gestring, but spare a thought for the Parisian who spent their entire life as an undercover OIympic Champion.
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