Frank Josef Kriz (March 26, 1894 – January 11, 1955) was an American gymnast and Olympic champion.[1] A member of the New York Sokol and the Bohemian Gymnastic Association, he competed in the 1920, 1924, and 1928 Summer Olympics.[2] In 1924, he received a gold medal in vault.[3] In 1922 and 1924, he won the Amateur Athletic Union national gymnastics title.[4][5] In 1959, he was one of the initial inductees to the USA Gymnastics Hall of Fame.[6]
Kriz was the very first U.S. gymnast, male or female, to win a medal of any sort at a Summer Olympic Games or World Championships on foreign soil, and would remain the only one to win any medal at those such games on foreign soil for nearly half a century until Cathy Rigby won a silver on balance beam at the 1970 World Championships in Ljubljana and Peter Kormann won a bronze medal on floor exercise at the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympic Games.
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