Alvin "The Father of Modern Hurdling" Kraenzlein

1. Alvin Kraenzlein

Kraenzlein, who grew up in Milwaukee and competed for UW-Madison, cleared some high hurdles – literally – on his way to four gold medals at the 1900 Games in Paris. He remains the only track-and-field athlete to have won four titles at one games (60-meter dash, 110-meter high hurdles, 200-meter low hurdles, long jump). He’s called “the father of the modern hurdling technique” because he stuck his leading leg straight out to clear hurdles, rather than slowing down and doing a two-legged hop.

2. Archie Hahn

Four years after Kraenzlein’s impressive medal haul, Dodgeville native Archie Hahn almost repeated the feat at the Games in St. Louis: Dubbed “the Milwaukee meteor” (he competed with the Milwaukee Athletic Club), Hahn won gold in the 60-, 100-, and 200-meter dashes. He later wrote a book titled simply How to Sprint. 

Metcalfe (center) with Jesse Owens and Frank Wykoff on the deck of the S. S. Manhattan as the team sailed for Germany in 1936. Image: Wikimedia Commons

3. Ralph Metcalfe

Jesse Owens wasn’t the only African-American athlete at the 1936 Games in Berlin to disprove host Adolf Hitler’s racist theories. Metcalfe, a Marquette University alum, was a member of Owen’s gold medal-winning 4x100 meter relay team. Metcalfe also won both the 100- and 200-meter NCAA championships three years in a row, was ranked as the “world’s fastest human” in 1934 and ’35, and broke or matched world records at least a dozen times in his career. Oh, and he served four terms in Congress.

4. Ben and John Peterson

These brothers are natives of the Barron County community of Comstock and were top freestyle wrestlers in the 1970s. Younger brother Ben (a two-time NCAA champion at Iowa State) won a gold in Munich in 1972 and a silver in 1976 in Montreal, while John won a silver in ’72 and a gold in ’76. They are now both enshrined in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

5. Paul and Morgan Hamm

This pair of brothers – born in Washburn and raised in Waukesha – also made Wisconsin proud. The twin gymnasts competed at the 2004 Athens Games, where Paul won the all-around gold (becoming the first American to do so in a century). Both earned silver medals as part of the U.S. team, while Paul nabbed another silver for his performance on the high bar.