Eagan, Eddie

▪ American boxer and bobsledder

in full  Edward Patrick Francis Eagan  

born April 26, 1897, Denver, Colorado, U.S.

died June 14, 1967, Rye, New York

      American boxer and bobsledder who was the only athlete to win gold medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics.

      After their father died in a railroad accident when Eddie was only a year old, he and his four brothers were raised by their mother, who managed a small income from teaching foreign languages. Inspired by Frank Merriwell, the hero of a series of dime novels, Eagan pursued his education as well as his interest in boxing. He attended the University of Denver for a year before serving in the U.S. Army as an artillery lieutenant during World War I. After the war, he entered Yale University and won the U.S. national amateur heavyweight title (1919) while a student. He graduated from Yale in 1921, attended Harvard Law School (1921–22), and received a Rhodes scholarship to the University of Oxford (B.A., Jurisprudence, 1924; M.A., 1928). While studying at Oxford, Eagan became the first American to win the British amateur boxing championship.

      Eagan won his first Olympic gold medal as a light heavyweight boxer at the 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium. Eagan also fought at the 1924 Olympics in Paris as a heavyweight but failed to medal. Though he had taken up the sport just three weeks before the competition, he managed to win a second gold medal as a member of the four-man bobsled team at the 1932 Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, U.S. Eagan was a member of the first group of athletes inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1983.

      Eagan became a respected attorney, serving as an assistant district attorney for southern New York and as chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission (1945–51). He married soap heiress Margaret Colgate and attained the rank of lieutenant colonel during World War II.

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