For those who deeply love sport, there is no greater joy than receiving and wearing an Olympic medal around your neck. Whether it is gold, silver or bronze, the achievement of this result repays sacrifices and hardships, it repays a long wait, for a few decades. Usually the medal arrives immediately, within 24 hours or just after finishing the competition. But in one very special case, a man had to wait 50 years to receive a medal.
Anders Haugen he was enrolled in the ski jumping competition at the Chamonix Winter Olympics in 1924, the first in modern history. The Le Mont springboard, with the K point identified at 71.5 meters, would have been dominated by the Norwegians, the favorites. Jacob Tullin Thams and Narve Bonn harpooned gold and silver, while the bronze was awarded to Thorleif Haug, which in that Olympic edition also won two golds, in cross-country skiing and in the Nordic combined. In fourth place came the American Anders Olsen Haugen, also of Norwegian descent but now a fully American citizen, after having chosen to emigrate to seek his fortune. Haugen had managed to produce the longest jump at the time, but he made a mistake while landing. The judges awarded him a lower score than he should have obtained, but he didn’t protest. It was not customary to make such controversies in those days, and the jumper, although sure of his bronze, returned to the States empty-handed and with a clear conscience.
Fifty years later, Thoralf Strømstad, silver medal in Nordic combined and cross-country skiing (50 km), explained to the sports historian Jacob Vaage that there had been a mistake by the judges in the ski jumping competition in Chamonix. It was Vaage himself who investigated the matter, discovering that Haugen had got the wrong score, and that in light of the results he should have received the bronze medal. Thorleif Haug had died in 1934, and therefore he could not have confirmed this new evidence or not, but it was not necessary. Anna Marie Haug Magnussen, the athlete’s daughter, was however very favorable to delivering her father’s medal to Anders Haugenwho in the meantime had moved to California.
The medal ceremony was a very touching moment. From California, where Haugen had taken part in the project of the ski club on Lake Tahoe, a flight was organized to Oslo, and therefore a trip to Bo, the Norwegian town where the American jumper was born in October 1888. It was the year 1974, and Haugen, at 85, was able to receive the bronze he was always sure he had won on the field. “If my father had still been alive he would have been very happy to give you this medal“Said Haug’s daughter, before hugging Haugen. To date it is the only gold medal in the United States in the discipline of ski jumping, at the Olympics.
Anders Haugen died in 1984 of kidney failure after overcoming prostate cancer. Until the age of 91 he had continued to ski and enjoy the snow, thanks to his regained medal.
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