James Connolly of South Boston, Mass. won the triple jump (then the hop, step and jump) with a distance of 13.71 meters to become the first Olympic champion in 1,527 years. He would go on to win two more medals - a silver in the high jump and and a bronze in the long jump.

Connolly should have been awarded a medal for just showing up. A 27-year-old undergraduate student, Connolly had to drop out of Harvard  when the university refused to grant him leave.  He then traveled to Athens by freighter and train getting robbed along the way. When Hahn finally arrived, it was the day before the Olympics began and his first competition.