George SHELDON

Dr George Sheldon of the Muegge Institute, St. Louis, had some anxious moments before being declared the winner of the 1904 diving event. He was initially announced as the winner but the Germans protested the judges' verdict, as they had done when Frank Kehoe was awarded equal third place, and the trophy was withheld from Sheldon while the protest was considered. One week after the competition, Games director James E. Sullivan rejected the protest and Sheldon, who studied medicine at the now defunct Barnes Medical College in St. Louis, was declared the winner. Sheldon had been warned throughout his ten year career that he had a “weak heart” and whilst training in New York to defend his title in the Athens Games of 1906 he suffered the first signs of the heart disease that would lead to his death a year later.