A lvin Christian Kraenzlein was born in Minneapolis on December 6, 1876, the youngest of four children of German immigrants John Georg Kraenzlein and Maria Augusta Schmidt. Not long after Alvin entered the fold, the family moved to Milwaukee, and John became the proprietor of a malt house in a city known for beer. When Alvin was six, his father bought half of the Red Rock Brewing Company in Fargo, North Dakota, and moved to Fargo with the intention of working there for a few years. But he never returned, abandoning his wife and four children. Young Alvin was forced to look to his brother, Hugo, fourteen years his senior, for guidance.
Despite this early loss, Alvin grew up as most boys do, playing all kinds of games and sports both indoors and out. As he reached his teenage years, Alvin began competitive running and jumping at Milwaukee’s East Side High School. He stood out as an athlete and was given permission to practice in the basement of the school.
After graduating from high school, Kraenzlein traveled ninety miles west to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He enrolled in 1895, studying engineering and joining the track team. He dominated his events, earning a national Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) title in the 220-yard hurdles in 1897. His achievements did not go unnoticed. Mike Murphy, a track coach and trainer at the University of Pennsylvania, began to woo Kraenzlein to transfer to Penn.
Murphy was a small man and was at least partially deaf. His pupils revered him; he was known for his charm and charisma, intelligence, interest in the world, and uncanny ability to spot talent. In addition to coaching, Murphy was making foundational changes to the sport of track and field. He pioneered the idea of crouching at the starting line before taking off to get more power from the legs, a technique every sprinter uses today. He also developed a method of using liniment or rubbing oil to treat sore muscles, wrote two books on physical fitness, and had revolutionary ideas about looking at an athlete as a whole human being with the need for proper rest and superb nutrition.
Alvin Kraenzlein, seen here, and his coach, Mike Murphy, changed track and field with innovations like this crouching technique. FROM THE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND RECORDS CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
Murphy once described Kraenzlein as “the world’s best all-around athlete of his time,” so it was no wonder he wanted him on his team. He convinced Alvin to say good-bye to his home state and join the Penn team, where Alvin continued to excel, setting the world record for the 120- and 220-yard hurdles and taking the AAU crown in the long jump in 1899. He captured the Intercollegiate Association of Amateur Athletes of America (IC4A) championships in both hurdling events for three straight years and scored a record 18 points at the 1899 meet, where he added a victory in the 100-yard dash and helped lead Penn to the team first-place trophy. In three years, Kraenzlein set nine intercollegiate records.
At Penn Kraenzlein changed his major to dentistry and began tinkering with his hurdling style. The common way of clearing a hurdle at this time was to run up to it, slow down, jump in a modified hopping position with both legs tucked under the buttocks, and then run on to the next hurdle and repeat the cumbersome process. Kraenzlein was the first to master a lead-leg technique. He figured out, perhaps with Coach Murphy’s guidance, that extending one leg straight over the hurdle while keeping the other tucked back allowed a runner to glide more naturally over the bar and not waste precious time slowing down. Kraenzlein’s polished hurdling method would be adopted worldwide.
Now the twenty-three-year-old Kraenzlein and a group of twelve others from Penn were making plans to attend the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris. Theirs would be one of the largest contingents in track and field. Although it was only the second Olympics in modern history, Coach Murphy—always ahead of his time—must have seen it as an excellent opportunity for his collegiate charges.
Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Georgetown, Michigan, and Syracuse also sent athletes. Enthusiasm for these Games was higher in the United States than it had been for the 1896 Athens affair, but there was still no national unity—no Team USA and no uniforms; athletes simply competed for whatever college or athletic union they belonged to. Thirty-five Americans would take part in track and field, with Murphy a trainer for the entire group. En route to Paris, many of the storied US athletes, most of them national or collegiate champions, took a detour through Britain and cleaned up at the 1900 UK Track and Field Championships. Confidence must have been high as they headed to Paris.
Milwaukee’s Kraenzlein perfected the lead-leg style of hurdling. FROM THE UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND RECORDS CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
An Olympic Village had not yet been conceived, and upon their arrival in Paris the athletes were grouped by school for their accommodations. The Penn contingent was shipped to Versailles, thirty minutes from Paris today but a much longer journey then.
The American crew’s outfits and banter shocked the French. At a time when the typical Frenchman strolled the streets in a straw hat and light overcoat, the Americans’ frat-boy style was appalling to the home crowd. The French grumbled that the Americans would throw on a sweater or even a bathrobe after racing—all except for Kraenzlein, who was later described as “dressed to the nines, wearing a saucy cloth cap, an Eton collar and a smart cravat” in the Sports Illustrated book The Olympics. It was equally strange for the US contingent to see how the Europeans dressed. One reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “The natty college costumes of the Americans were a decided contrast to the homemade attire of some of the best European athletes.” Cultural divides were evident, and cultural practices were lost in translation. When the Americans used college cheers to root for each other, a European spectator said, “What a band of savages!”
The French and Americans had been in a bit of a feud about scheduling even before the games commenced. France had announced that the sporting events would start on Sunday, July 15. The US group saw this as out of the question for religious reasons—Sunday was the Lord’s Day, and the blue laws in effect in some states forbade sporting activities. When the US contingent suggested starting on Saturday, July 14, their hosts politely but firmly pointed out that they had a little something else planned for Saturday: it was Bastille Day, a national holiday akin to the US Fourth of July, and there would be parades and military demonstrations to impress the crowds. The Americans refused to budge, and the French eventually gave in, agreeing to begin sports competitions on Saturday. The US athletes arrived in Europe under the impression that competition would kick off on Saturday and then recess until Monday, with a quiet day of rest and prayer on Sunday.
Kraenzlein would compete in four events: the 110-meter high hurdles, 200-meter hurdles, long jump, and 60-meter dash. His first event was the 110-meter hurdles, scheduled for Saturday. Barely a thousand people watched the entirety of the Saturday competitions, and many of those were said to be affiliated with the United States—either expat Americans or tourists. Almost all Parisians went off to hear the French president review the status of the troops.
A 110-meter distance was unusual for hurdlers competing from the United States or Britain, who normally ran a slightly shorter 120-yard hurdle race. But despite the unusual distance and the ragged, hastily constructed track and hurdles, Alvin Kraenzlein cruised through the qualifying heats. Considering his earlier titles and experience, many felt he had no peer.
In the finals later on Saturday, a Frenchman who was inexperienced with the starting gun (and perhaps one of the only Parisians not enjoying Bastille Day) may have let competitor John McLean of Michigan get away with a false start. Observers said McLean appeared to be a full five yards ahead of Kraenzlein as soon as they took off from the blocks. The 110-meter race is only about a third of the way around a modern track, and Kraenzlein would have less than 15 seconds of running time to make up for the early differential. He still trailed McLean with three hurdles left. But then talent and pure desire took over, and Kraenzlein put on a burst of speed to catch McLean at the eighth of ten hurdles, winning by about three feet. His time was 15.4 seconds, a world record for the 110 meters. McLean took second and fellow American Fred Moloney third.
Instead of medals, the French were handing out objets d’art, including paintings that ranged in value from fifty to two hundred francs. Medals for the gold, silver, and bronze finishers would not be given out until the next Olympics in 1904 in St. Louis. Those objets d’art would be the only prizes McLean and Moloney would collect on the trip, but Kraenzlein was just getting started.
That same day he had qualifying heats for the long jump. The top five jumpers would advance to the final. The heavy favorite to win was Meyer Prinstein of Syracuse University, who had set a world record in an earlier meet with a leap of 24 feet, 7.25 inches (7.51 meters). Prinstein and Kraenzlein had met in track and field events three times in 1900, and their duels were legendary across the athletic world. Between the two of them, they had set six of the last seven world records in three years. Kraenzlein had taken the 1899 world record jump at 7.43 meters only to see Prinstein wrest it back one year later when Kraenzlein was recuperating from malaria. New York sports journalist Malcom Ford described the difference in their styles: “[Prinstein] does not approach the takeoff with as much speed as Alvin Kraenzlein, but he gets higher up in the air and also in better shape. He has an unusually pretty style and impresses one that he always knows what he is doing.”
Ireland’s Peter O’Connor was also considered one of the best in the world, and the long jump was one of the most highly anticipated competitions in Paris. When O’Connor failed to show up, all eyes turned to Kraenzlein and Prinstein. In the qualifier Prinstein jumped 7.174 meters, setting an Olympic record. Kraenzlein was second at 6.930 meters. Nobody else was over 6.8 meters, and Prinstein held a good lead over Kraenzlein heading into the finals.
Then the French informed everyone that the finals of the long jump and several other events would be held on Sunday. The Americans were incensed. Amos Alonzo Stagg, manager of the University of Chicago team (who would go on to football fame and eventually have the NCAA Division III title game named after him), wrote a letter to the New York Herald complaining, “Everybody here feels that it is a most contemptible trick. Not a single American would have sent a team had it not been definitely announced that the games would not be held on a Sunday.”
The Americans were in a pinch. Would they compete even though they felt it was sacrilegious? Or would they boycott the Olympics on Sunday? Prinstein’s university, Syracuse, was affiliated with the Methodist Church and forbade competing on the Christian Sabbath. Prinstein himself was Jewish, which must have put him in a quandary, as his religious beliefs did not conflict with the Sunday events. The US athletes huddled up. Some were in favor of competing, others violently opposed, and still others uncertain. Nevertheless, at least part of the group reportedly entered into a gentlemen’s agreement and said they would show solidarity and refuse to set foot on the track on Sunday. Prinstein went to bed Saturday night believing that Kraenzlein was in on the agreement and would not compete. Whether Kraenzlein had indeed sworn to this pact is unknown. Mike Murphy and the Penn gang did not have the same ardent beliefs as Syracuse. Murphy may have influenced his troops to compete or simply allowed them to make up their own minds, but whatever the reason, Kraenzlein decided to jump.
The day of the final dawned, and Kraenzlein had six unopposed cracks at besting Prinstein’s mark of 7.175 meters. Five times he failed. But one of his leaps took him just a centimeter farther than Prinstein: 7.185 meters. It was good enough for first place.
Prinstein was livid. He appealed to the French organizers, who sympathized but would not go so far as to hand him the top spot. The officials conferred and decided that Prinstein should be awarded the second-place trophy based on his marks from qualifying. Pat Leahy of Great Britain was a distant third at 6.950 meters. But Prinstein was still boiling. As Kraenzlein went on to the 60 meters, where he dashed to a third gold in just seven seconds, Prinstein stewed.
By Monday Prinstein had come up with a plan. The day opened blazing hot and would reach 95 degrees Fahrenheit, but Prinstein had but one focus. He sought out Kraenzlein and challenged him to a jump-off to prove the real champion. When Kraenzlein refused, Prinstein charged at him and threw a punch. Other US team members had to physically restrain Prinstein before a fight broke out. After the confrontation, both men collected themselves and ignored the stifling heat well enough to compete again. Prinstein went on to take part in the triple jump, an event that had not been on the original program. Athletes had asked for it, and although the French Journal des Sports called it “perfectly boring,” officials added it. Prinstein took out all of his frustration on the triple jump track, setting a new Olympic record and winning his first gold, defeating reigning champion James Connolly (the man who had won the first modern Olympic crown four years earlier).
With three golds—in the 110-meter hurdles, the long jump, and the 60-meter dash—there was only one thing left for Kraenzlein: the 200-meter hurdles. The top two hurdlers from each qualifying heat would advance. Both the qualification and final were run on that sweltering Monday.
It was no contest for Kraenzlein. He set a new Olympic record in heat one, blowing away the second-place qualifier, Eugène Choisel of France, by four yards. Norman Pritchard of India and Walter Tewksbury of the United States, who happened to be Kraenzlein’s roommate at Penn, qualified in heat two. The four of them would run for first, second, and third. Based on qualifying times, Pritchard seemed to be the only legitimate threat to Kraenzlein.
Still dealing with overwhelming heat plus the shoddy track that was slowing down everyone’s times, the four runners took off. Using the lead-leg technique he had by now perfected, Kraenzlein cruised to victory in 25.4 seconds—fast enough for an easy triumph, but still almost two seconds slower than a time he had posted a year earlier on a properly maintained track. Second-place finisher Pritchard crossed five yards behind him, a lifetime in a short track race. Tewksbury crossed in third, and Choisel of France brought up the rear.
The boy who had grown up without his father, trained in the basement of East Side High School, and worked with one of the greatest track coaches of all time was a quadruple champion. Alvin Kraenzlein was the first person to take four individual Olympic golds. He remains the only person to do so in track and field. Thirty-six years later, Jesse Owens would win four times in 1936 in Berlin, but one of those events was a team relay (see chapter 6). Kraenzlein is considered one of the heroes of the 1900 Games.
Yet immediately after his historic win, Kraenzlein announced, “This was my last race. I am through with athletics and shall devote myself to something more serious.” After all, he was Dr. Kraenzlein now, having completed his dental degree at Penn a few months earlier. The Paris Olympics continued for several months in ragged fashion, but Kraenzlein’s work was done. He returned to the United States and retired from competition.
After the International Championships and the Exposition Universelle wrapped up, Pierre de Coubertin admitted the organizers’ shortcomings, saying, “We made a hash of our work.” He vowed the Olympics would only get better.
Two years later Kraenzlein married artist Claudine Gilman, whom he had met at the Penn Relays, a track and field event. A year later they had a daughter, Claudine Gilman Kraenzlein. The threesome loved the beach and spent many summer days in Belmar, New Jersey, at The Cedars, a large summer hotel owned by Alvin’s in-laws. In 1909 Alvin and Claudine welcomed son Alvin Charles; sadly, he died in 1911.
Ten years after the Paris Games, Mike Murphy, the visionary track coach who helped spur Penn athletes to great success, was in failing health. Some say he caught tuberculosis watching a football game in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on a frigid November evening in 1911. By 1913 he was too weak to attend the collegiate track and field championships. When Penn captured the team title, athletes gathered at his bedside to tell him of the victory. He slipped into unconsciousness and died three days later at home. Alvin Kraenzlein was an honorary pallbearer at his funeral.
Somewhere along the way, Kraenzlein rejected a life of dentistry. Despite his pronouncement that he was devoting himself to more serious pursuits than athletics, he was drawn back to the track and became a coach, work he dove into with a passion. He led teams at the Pennsylvania prep school Mercersburg Academy and the University of Michigan to success. In 1913 he was invited by Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany to coach the German track and field team, which was preparing for the 1916 Olympics, slated to take place on their home turf in Berlin. Kraenzlein signed a five-year contract for a reported $50,000, a handsome sum, and moved his family overseas.
But the time spent in Germany did not last as long as both sides had hoped. War was imminent, and the kaiser warned Alvin to get his family out of the country while he could. The Kraenzleins left Germany not a moment too soon. Alvin returned to coaching at Michigan and went on fishing trips to Canada as often as he could. In 1924, the lure of the Olympics drew Alvin once again, and he accepted a position as Cuba’s track coach. Now age forty-eight, he was coaching in Cuba when he began to have heart trouble and was forced to return to the United States for treatment. His rival Meyer Prinstein was having similar health issues. Prinstein passed away of a heart condition in 1925 at the age of forty-six. He was inducted posthumously into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in Commack, New York.
Alvin Kraenzlein developed pneumonia in 1927, then became deathly ill with endocarditis, an inflammation of the inner lining of the heart. He was only fifty-one. He died on January 6, 1928, in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. At his funeral he was remembered as the best athlete ever to compete for the University of Pennsylvania. His obituary made national news and was featured prominently on the front page of the New York Sun. “Doctor Kraenzlein was one of the greatest track and field athletes ever produced in the United States—or the world,” the newspaper crowed. Close to a century later, some still consider him to be in that class of athletic prowess.
More than a hundred years have passed since Alvin Kraenzlein walked the streets of Paris in his “saucy cap” and wowed the sporting world. His grandchildren have donated many of his papers and pictures to the University of Pennsylvania, and Alvin was inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1974 and the US Olympic Hall of Fame in 1984. He remains a powerful Olympic figure, prominently featured in most Olympics history books as the first and only winner of four individual gold medals in track and field.
“Our mother was very proud of her father and loved him very much,” recalled granddaughter Susanna Tvede, who was born in Denmark. “It is a shame he died before we were born. He was not on our minds when we were little…. We became more aware of our American grandfather as we grew older. My son has his gold watch. We are all proud of him.”
