History
The first Olimpia de Oro was given to racing car driver Juan Manuel Fangio on 3 December 1954 at the Luna Park stadium in Buenos Aires, and the first woman to receive the award was tennis player Norma Baylon in 1962. Other women to win the Olimpia de Oro individually were tennis player Gabriela Sabatini in 1987 and 1988, roller skaters Nora Vega in 1995 and Andrea Noemí González in 1998, and field hockey player Cecilia Rognoni in 2002. The women's national field hockey team, known in Argentina as Las Leonas, won the award collectively in 2000, becoming the only team so honored to date.
Boxer Santos Laciar is the only person to receive 3 consecutive Olimpias de Oro, in 1982, 1983 and 1984, due to his conquering and retaining of the world flyweight title. Tennis player Guillermo Vilas also received 3 Olimpias de Oro, in 1974, 1975 and 1977. The only other people with consecutive Olimpias de Oro are Sabatini and basketball player Manu Ginóbili, who won the award by himself in 2003 and shared it in 2004. Four others have received 2 Olimpias de Oro: golfer Roberto De Vicenzo in 1967 and 1970, rower Alberto Demiddi in 1969 and 1971, Diego Maradona in 1979 and 1986, and Rognoni as a member of Las Leonas in 2000 and separately in 2002.
The Olimpia de Oro has only been shared twice in its history: in 2004, when Ginóbili shared the honor with association football player Carlos Tévez, and in 2008, when the award was bestowed on cyclists Juan Curuchet and Walter Pérez.
The only Olimpia de Platino (Platinum Olimpia) was awarded at the end of the 20th century to Maradona as "the best sportsperson of the century".
Read more about this topic: Olimpia Award
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of a soldier’s wound beguiles the pain of it.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)