Eight of his track and field jumping victories came in individual events, which established another record in its own right. However, his fame has been somewhat curtailed by the fact that none of his events, in their precise definition, remains an Olympic sport.

Yet his is a classic against-all-odds story from the Olympic book of courage. Ewry, born on October 18, 1872 in Lafayette, Indiana, contracted polio as a boy and was for a while confined to a wheelchair. Doctors feared that he might be paralysed for life.

The young boy had other ideas, and started to exercise his legs on a daily basis. Those early efforts were the makings of a great athlete. Ewry used calisthenics - tiny impulse movements - to strengthen his muscles. It is an exercise still used in the training regimes of world-class athletes, among them the world triple jump record holder, Jonathan Edwards, of Britain.

In 1890, he enrolled in Purdue, where he studied for seven years, emerging with degrees in mechanical engineering. He then moved to New York, where he joined the city’s Athletics Club and worked as a hydraulics engineer for the city’s water department.

Ewry was 26 by the time he won his first three gold medals at Paris in 1900. They came in the standing high jump, the standing long jump and the standing triple jump, events which mirror the modern sports minus the run up to the jump. He won all three gold medals on the same day, July 16, 1900.

His efforts so took the imagination in France that Ewry was dubbed the "Human Frog". In 1904 he retained all three titles. The standing triple jump was dropped for the 1906 intercalated Games and in 1908, so Ewry could only defend two titles at each of those Games, which he did successfully.

After 1912, all three standing events were dropped. Ewry returned to his role as an engineer. He died aged 63 on September 27, 1937.

CRAIG LORD
The Times