Eric Heiden

Eric Heiden

Heiden at the 2006 Winter Olympics
Personal information
Born	June 14, 1958 (1958-06-14) Madison, Wisconsin
Height	1.84 m (6 ft 0 in)
Weight	86 kg (190 lb; 13.5 st)
Sport
Country	USA
Sport	Speed skating
Medal record Men's speed skating Competitor for the USA Olympic Games Gold 1980 Lake Placid 500 m Gold 1980 Lake Placid 1000 m Gold 1980 Lake Placid 1500 m Gold 1980 Lake Placid 5000 m Gold 1980 Lake Placid 10000 m World Championships Gold 1977 Heerenveen Allround Gold 1978 Gothenburg Allround Gold 1979 Oslo Allround Gold 1977 Alkmaar Sprint Gold 1978 Lake Placid Sprint Gold 1979 Inzell Sprint Gold 1980 Milwaukee Sprint Silver 1980 Heerenveen Allround

Eric Arthur Heiden, M.D. (born June 14, 1958 in Madison, Wisconsin) is an American former long track speed skater and road cyclist who won all the men's speed skating races, and thus an unprecedented five individual gold medals, and set four Olympic records and one world record at the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid, New York, United States. He was the most successful athlete at the same Games, and is indeed, the most successful Winter Olympian from a single edition of Winter Olympics. He also delivered the Athlete's Oath at those same games.

Heiden is an icon in the speed skating community and, in particular, in Europe where the sport is highly regarded. His victories are significant as few speed skaters (and athletes in general) have won competitions in both sprint and long-distance events. Heiden is the only athlete in the history of speed skating to have won all five events in a single Olympic tournament and the only one to have won a gold medal in all events. He is considered by some to be the best overall speedskater (short and long distances) in the sport's history. Heiden ranked No. 46 in ESPN's SportsCentury 50 Greatest Athletes of the 20th Century in 1999, the only speed skater to make the list; in 2000, a Dutch newspaper called him the greatest skater ever.

His sister, Beth Heiden, is also an accomplished cyclist, speedskater and cross-country skier. In Heiden's hometown of Shorewood Hills, Wisconsin (a suburb of Madison), Eric and his sister Beth were the driving forces behind the creation of the "Heiden Haus", a small outpost where local children can warm up after skating or playing hockey on the ice rink (complete with underground clay platform).

After his sports career, Heiden became a physician, and as of 2011 is a practicing orthopedic surgeon in the Salt Lake City, Utah, area.

Skating career

During his short speed skating career, Heiden won three World Allround Championships and four World Sprint Championships. Three times he broke the world record in the 1,000 metres, twice in the 3,000 metres, and once each in the 1,500 metres and 10,000 metres. He also broke the points world record in both allround and the sprinting distances.

Heiden finished his speed skating career by finishing second behind Hilbert van der Duim at the 1980 World Allround Championships in Heerenveen. He stood at the top of the Adelskalender for an impressive 1,495 days, and won the Oscar Mathisen Award four times in a row from 1977 until 1980. As of 2006, he still is the only skater who has won the award four times.

He received the 1980 James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States. In 1983 he was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame.

He was elected to the Wisconsin Athletic Hall of Fame in 1990.

World records

Over the course of Heiden's career he skated 15 world records:

• 1500-m junior, 2:02.75 (January 18, 1976, Madonna di Campiglio; beaten by Heiden)
• 5000-m junior, 7:30.23 (February 20, 1977, Inzell; beaten by Heiden)
• 1500-m junior, 1:59.46 (February 20, 1977; beaten by Aleksandr Klimov March 24, 1983)
• Allround junior, 168.716 (February 19–20, 1977, Inzell; beaten by Heiden)
• 3000-m junior, 4:16.2 (February 4, 1977, Montreal; beaten by Tomas Gustafson January 26, 1980)
• Allround junior, 166.584 (February 4–5, 1977, Montreal; beaten by Aleksand Klimov March 24, 1983)
• 5000-m junior, 7:23.54 (February 5, 1978, Montreal; beaten by Tomas Gustafson January 27, 1980)
• 3000-m, 4:07.00 (March 2, 1978, Inzell; beaten by Heiden)
• 1000-m, 1:14.99 (March 12, 1978, Savalen; beaten by Heiden)
• 1000-m, 1:13.60 (January 13, 1980, Davos; beaten by Gaetan Boucher, January 31, 1981)
• Allround, 162.973 (February 10–11, 1980, Bislett, Oslo; beaten by Viktor Shasherin, March 25–26, 1983)
• 3000-m, 4:06.91 (March 18, 1979, Savalen; beaten by Dmitri Ogloblin March 28, 1979)
• Sprint, 150.250 (January 12–13, 1980, Davos; beaten by Gaetan Boucher January 30–31, 1980)
• 1500-m, 1:54.79 (January 19, 1980, Davos; beaten by Igor Zhelezovski March 26, 1983)
• 10,000-m, 14:28.13 (February 23, 1980, Lake Placid; beaten by Dmitri Ogloblin March 29, 1980)

Road bicycle racing

After his speed-skating career, Heiden became a professional racing cyclist. He was one of the first cross-over athletes, becoming a founding member of the 7-Eleven Cycling Team. Together with his former speed skating coach (and ex-bike racer), Jim Ochowicz, he conceived of the idea of a European-style sponsored team for North American riders. Heiden won a few American professional races. He finished the 1985 Giro d'Italia and took part in the 1986 Tour de France, although he did not complete the race, falling five days from the finish.

Heiden is believed to have recorded one of the fastest times on one of the local benchmark climbs in Woodside, California: Old La Honda Road. In 1985, Heiden won the first U.S. Professional Cycling Championship, becoming the American road race champion.

In 1999, Heiden was inducted into the United States Bicycling Hall of Fame.

Medical career

After starting his undergraduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison Heiden earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Stanford University in 1984 and earned his M.D., also from Stanford in 1991. He completed orthopedic residency training at UC Davis in 1996 and after a year at a sports medicine clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, returned to California to practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Sacramento. At that time, he also served as team physician for the NBA's Sacramento Kings and the Sacramento Monarchs of the WNBA. In 2002, 2006 and 2010, he was team physician for the U.S. Olympic Speedskating Team. He opened a sports medicine-based practice at The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital (TOSH) in Murray, Utah and has recently expanded Heiden Orthopaedics with an additional office in Park City, Utah.

He has followed in the footsteps of his father, Jack Heiden, a longtime orthopedic surgeon in Madison, Wisconsin.

In 2008, Heiden published Faster, Better, Stronger, a book about exercise science and exercise programs.

In 2009, he was one of the team of doctors assisting U.S. speed skater J.R. Celski as he recovered from a very bad speed skating crash during the U.S. Olympic trials. Despite cutting himself to the bone and requiring 60 stitches, the doctors were able to help Celski recover in time for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, where he won the bronze medal in both men's 1500m and 5000m relay.

See also

• List of multiple Olympic gold medalists at a single Games

References

1. ^ "VeloNews – The Journal of Competitive Cycling". January 10, 2010. http://www.velonews.com/news/fea/9452.0.html. 

Further reading

• Wangrin, Mark (1999). "Eric Heiden: True Gold". In ESPN SportsCentury. New York: Hyperion-ESPN Books. pp. 252–3.

External links

• Eric Heiden at SkateResults.com
• PB's and a link to all his International Championships
• Eric Heiden's U.S. Olympic Team bio ... notes, quotes, photos
• Eric Heiden interview on 25th anniversary of Olympic heroics
• IOC 1980 Winter Olympics
• Current skaters comment on Heiden's legacy
• Race-by-race analysis by Heiden
• Scientific approach to find the best skater of all times, University of Groningen, The Netherlands (Dutch)
• Book Review of Faster, Better, Stronger at Letters on Pages

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Sten Stensen	Oscar Mathisen Award 1977–1980	Succeeded by Amund Sjøbrend
Preceded by Sebastian Coe	United Press International Athlete of the Year 1980	Succeeded by Sebastian Coe
Preceded by Kurt Thomas	James E. Sullivan Award 1980	Succeeded by Carl Lewis