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
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“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)