Heiden, Eric A.
Cycling, Speed Skating
b. June 14, 1958, Madison, WI
Heiden was a hero in Europe before his name was well known in the United States. One of the most popular songs in Norway in 1979 was "The Ballad of Eric Heiden."
At eighteen, he won the 1977 world junior overall, senior overall, and sprint championships, an unprecedented sweep. He repeated the sweep in 1978. A year later, he won the world sprint title again and captured all four events at the world overall championships, setting a record of 14:43.11 in the 10,000-meter race. In 1980, he won the world sprint and overall championships for the fourth straight year, setting world records of 1:13.60 in the 1,000 meters and 1:54.79 in the 1500 meters.
Entering the 1980 Winter Olympics just a week later, Heiden was expected to win at least two gold medals and perhaps as many as four. He astonished almost everyone by winning five.
In the 500-meter race, his weakest event, he set a world record of 38.03 seconds. After setting Olympic records in the 1000-, 1500-, and 5000-meter races, he watched the U. S. Olympic hockey team beat the Soviet Union. The win so excited him that he found it hard to sleep. Awaking late the next morning, he had a couple of slices of bread for breakfast, hurried to the speed skating rink, and won the 10,000-meter race in 14:28.13, breaking the world record by 6.20 seconds.
Heiden won the Sullivan Award as the nation's outstanding amateur athlete of 1980. When he announced his retirement after the Olympics, Heiden said, "Maybe if things had stayed the way they were, and I could still be obscure in an obscure sport, I might want to keep skating. I really liked it best when I was a nobody."