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Eric Heiden

2634 Main St, Lake Placid, NY

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Eric Heiden won all five men's individual speed skating gold medals at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics, sweeping every event from the short 500-meter sprint to the grueling 10,000-meter distance race, a combination of speed and endurance dominance across the sport's full range of distances that remains unmatched by any speed skater before or since. His five golds at a single Olympics remain the most individual gold medals won by any athlete at a single Winter Olympics in history, and Heiden's ability to win events requiring completely different physiological demands — explosive sprint speed versus sustained distance endurance — is considered one of the most statistically improbable achievements in Winter Olympics history. After his speed skating career, Heiden became a competitive professional cyclist, competing in the Tour de France, before eventually attending medical school and becoming an orthopedic surgeon, giving him one of the more unusual post-competitive career paths of any Olympic champion. His five-gold performance at Lake Placid remains the individual benchmark for Winter Olympics dominance across any sport, and Heiden's combination of sprint and distance excellence within a single Olympics is still frequently cited as one of the greatest individual performances in the history of the Winter Games.

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