Gold, Silver
And Bronze
It’s a dream for many athletes to represent their country on one of the biggest stages in sports: the Olympic Games. Wichita is no stranger to Olympic medals, with several Wichitans representing the United States in the Olympics through the years. Ahead of the 2024 games in Paris, SPLURGE! is looking back at Olympic medalists from Wichita.
Jeff Farrell
It would be another 28 years before another Wichitan would bring home an Olympic medal, when swimmer Jeff Farrell won the 800-meter freestyle relay and the 400-meter relay in the 1960 Rome Olympic Games. Farrell attended Wichita East High School, where he tied the national record for the 220-yard freestyle his senior year. Farrell notably swam in the 1960 Olympic trials just six days after undergoing an appendectomy. Farrell’s gold medal races set world records for both events.
Photo courtesy Kansas Sports Hall of Fame
Lynette Woodard
Lynette Woodard is known as one of the greatest women’s basketball players to ever play the game. Woodard grew up in Wichita, attending Wichita North High School and eventually playing basketball at the University of Kansas. Woodard made her first Team USA women’s basketball roster in 1980, but due to the United States boycott of the 1980 games in Moscow, Woodard didn’t play in the Olympics until the 1984 games in Los Angeles.
“At the time it was number one — one of the biggest opportunities you had to try out for,” Woodard said. “It was one of the highest honors you could achieve, and I certainly wanted to compete.”
Woodard was turning 25 years old by the end of the Olympic Games in 1984, but the shooting guard from Wichita captained the team, which included other notable players like Cheryl Miller and Pamela McGee, and was coached by Pat Summitt. “The people back home are counting on you, so you didn’t want to play around with that, you wanted to be on your best behavior, you wanted to focus, you wanted to do what you could do so you could represent that red, white and blue,” Woodard said.
Team USA dominated every game, eventually defeating Canada by 31 points in the championship game, earning Woodard and her teammates the gold medal — the first Olympic gold medal for the U.S. in women’s basketball. Woodard went on to become the first female Harlem Globetrotter, played in the WNBA and become a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee, all the while continuing to represent the city she calls home.
“I’m proud of where I’m from … If there’s one thing you learned [in Wichita], especially in elementary school, you learned about the Wizard of Oz — Dorothy and Toto, but mainly about following your dreams.” Woodard said. “You could be from Wichita, but that tornado could take you away and you could go to some pretty cool places, so I never had any boundaries of what could and what couldn’t be, so I just kept an open mind.”
Photo courtesy Kansas Sports Hall of Fame
Kelsey Stewart-Hunter
Kelsey Stewart-Hunter grew up in the Wichita area, graduating from Maize High School, and earning a spot on the University of Florida’s softball team. During her time in college, Stewart-Hunter won two national championships, earning All-American honors in 2014 and 2015.
Softball hasn’t always been an Olympic sport, in fact, softball will not be played in the 2024 Olympic Games, but it will return in 2028. But, while Stewart-Hunter was growing up, softball was regularly in the Olympics, giving Stewart-Hunter the motivation to one day make the roster. “Representing your country — there’s nothing you can compare it to, there’s no words you can say, but that honor of getting to wear USA across your chest and represent something so much bigger than yourself, so many different people, walks of life, all coming together and supporting one group, one country is unbelievable,” Stewart-Hunter said.
The structure of softball in the 2021 Olympic Games in Tokyo involved a group stage with six teams, where the top two teams advanced to the gold medal game. The United States won all five games in the group stage, including against eventual gold medal opponent Japan, where Stewart-Hunter hit the walk-off home run in the bottom of the seventh inning to secure the win for the U.S. Stewart-Hunter called that home run one of the top five moments of her career.
“That walk-off, it was during Covid-19 and there were no fans so I hit it and I felt like there were 30 thousand fans and my team was going crazy, I was going crazy, I still get chills thinking about it, absolutely amazing,” Stewart-Hunter said. Stewart-Hunter’s home run became the only home run for team USA throughout the entire Olympic Games that year. The team advanced to the gold medal match, falling short to Japan 2–0, earning a silver medal for the U.S.
Stewart-Hunter has continued her professional softball career with Athletes Unlimited and is working towards a spot on the 2028 U.S. Olympic team. While she continues to follow her Olympic dreams, Stewart-Hunter encourages other Olympic hopefuls to follow their dreams, no matter what.
“I would tell them to never let someone tell you that you can’t do something,” Stewart-Hunter said. “Once you get to that level, there’s always going to be people who tell you that you can’t do something, so if you push past it and move past it, and keep going and follow your dream, there are so many people in your corner who can help you.”
Photo courtesy USA Softball
Jim Bausch
Jim Bausch brought home Wichita’s first Olympic medal when he won the decathlon in the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Bausch originally grew up in Garden Plain, but eventually moved to Wichita where he finished high school and started his college football career at then Wichita University. Bausch, nicknamed “Jarrin’ Jim,” threw the javelin 203 feet and 3.5 inches in the 1932 decathlon, propelling him from a fifth-place position on day one of the competition, to the gold medal. Bausch set the world record that year for the decathlon with 8,462 points. He eventually went on to play professional football and is considered by many the greatest all-around athlete in Kansas history.
Photo courtesy Kansas Sports Hall of Fame
Jim Ryun
Jim Ryun represented the United States at three consecutive Olympic Games. Ryun started making his mark in the running world while he was at Wichita East High School, where he notably became the first high school boy to run a sub-four-minute mile. Ryun clocked a 3:59.0 mile in 1964 at the Compton Relays at the age of 17. That same year, Ryun made his first Olympic team, traveling to Tokyo with Team USA, falling just short of the gold medal race for the 1500-meter.
At the time of the 1968 Olympic Games, Ryun held world records in the 880-yard and the 1,500-meter races, in addition to the mile. He once again joined Team USA, this time in Mexico City, where Ryun earned a silver medal for the 1,500-meter race. “Before I started running I had been cut from every team I had tried out for,” Ryun said. “All of a sudden in a few years I found myself on the step of the Olympic Games for a silver medal, and it was a great honor to represent the United States.”
Ryun made one more appearance in the Olympics at the 1972 games in Munich. Ryun tripped in his 1,500-meter heat and didn’t qualify for the final. Ryun was just 25 years old during his last appearance at the Olympics, making an undeniable mark on the sport at that time.
“Don’t be afraid to try. You’re going to have some failures, but you’re only a failure if you don’t try,” Ryun said. “The whole concept of an adventure — it’s important there’s no guarantee of success — but that’s part of the adventure of trying and of life itself.”
Photo courtesy Kansas Sports Hall of Fame
Marc Waldie
Wichita welcomed home two gold medalists from the 1984 Olympics. Marc Waldie was a well-known basketball player when he was growing up in Wichita, but eventually attended The Ohio State University for volleyball. Waldie made the national team in 1976 and played on the team until 1984. In the 1984 Olympic Games, Team USA won all but one set out of the six matches played, defeating Brazil to earn the gold medal.
Photo courtesy The Ohio State University
Nico Hernandez
Nico Hernandez was born in Wichita and attended Wichita North High School. He qualified for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro for boxing in the men’s light flyweight division. At the time, Hernandez was just 20 years old, and was not a favorite amongst his competition. Hernandez caused a stir in the boxing world when he won his first three fights, earning a spot in a semi-final match against eventual gold medalist Hasanboy Dusmatov of Uzbekistan. Though losing to Dusmatov, Hernandez went on to earn a bronze medal.
Photo courtesy USA Boxing