Canadian Duff Gibson created history when he became the oldest individual gold medalist at the Winter Olympics at the age of 39 (Men’s skeleton title). He broke the record of Magnar Solberg who was 35 when he won his last gold. The oldest athlete to win it in a team event remains, as CNN reports:

The oldest Winter champion for any event is Jay O’Brien, who was 48 when he won four-man bobsleigh gold for the United States at the 1932 Games in Lake Placid.

At the summer games, Oscar Swahn was the part of the Running Deer shooting team at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics which won gold. . He was 64-years and 258-days old. Incidentally he is also the oldest olympian. As the official Olympic site reports:

After World War I, Swahn returned to the Olympics -at the age of 72. He won a silver medal in the running deer double-shot team event and also competed in the individual and team single-shot contests.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 18th, 2006 at 6:22 am and is filed under Olympics, Winter Sports, World Records. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.