RIP Olympic Great Al Oerter Dead at 71

[sandgk]

Olympic great, 4 time gold medal winner discus hurler Al Oerter passed away at age 71 Monday.

Yahoo.

Al Oerter, Olympic discus great turned painter, dies at 71
October 1, 2007
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) -- Al Oerter was destined to become an athlete, although he often wondered what he might have been if not for a chance meeting with a discus. "I could throw a baseball, a football or a golf ball a country mile," Oerter told the Associated Press in an interview last year. "It was just easy to throw anything."
The discus great who won gold medals in four straight Olympics to become one of track and field's biggest stars in the 1950s and '60s, died Monday of heart failure, less than two weeks after his 71st birthday.

His long love affair with the circular disk that would bring him fame began one day when he was hanging around a track, watching practice and gave it a try.
"I picked it and threw back to a guy further than he threw it to me," Oerter recalled. "The coach walked over to me and said you need to go over there with them." Oerter died at a hospital near his Fort Myers Beach home, wife Cathy Oerter said. He dealt with high blood pressure since he was young and struggled with heart problems, she said.

"He was a gentle giant," she said. "He was bigger than life." Oerter won gold medals in 1956, 1960, 1964 and 1968. Oerter and Carl Lewis are the only track and field stars to capture the same event in four consecutive Olympics. Oerter, however, is the only one to set an Olympic record in each of his victories.

[Best Buckeye]

Al was one great athlete. At a time when we were in a very intense competion with the Russians and others for olympic medals he was a shining star and a tower of strentgh.
He was the first one to record a legal throw of over 200 feet in 1962.
In 1980 he recorded the longest throw in the world 25 years after his olympic career began.
RIP Al.