The triumphant return of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France on July 26 is right around the corner! If you will recall, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were rescheduled to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, without spectators and with an abundance of testing, masking, and social distancing. The Summer Olympics, Winter Olympics, and Paralympics are great opportunities to see the world’s greatest athletes perform on the broadest stage. With such a large spotlight, we, as spectators, are introduced to so many incredible feats being performed by people dedicated to their craft. In celebration, here is a small selection of iconic Summer Olympians from Team USA and accompanying selected cards. Narrowing the selections down to five cards was a hard task, and there were many cards and athletes excluded from this brief list that I struggled to leave out. Team USA has a long, rich history, so please tag @HobbyNewsDaily and/or @LaurenGoesHere to share your favorites!
Simone Biles
Born March 14, 1997, Simone Biles is the most decorated gymnast in history including four gold, one silver, and two bronze Olympic medals amongst her 37 achievement medals and counting. It is possible she would be even more decorated, but she had to withdraw from several events during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in 2021 due to a case of the “twisties.” Though she faced much (undeserved) backlash from her decision, the high profile withdrawal allowed non-athletes to learn more about the condition as well as the mental health required to achieve such high levels of physical success. Amongst her many achievements, Biles has five skills named after her and was named the youngest recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2022. The 27 year old gymnast will be attending her third Olympic games this year in Paris and has an opportunity to come home with even more accomplishments. The card shown here is a gold parallel of her base card from the 2016 Topps US Olympic and Paralympic Hopefuls set.
1992 Dream Team
During the 1988 Seoul Olympics, the Team USA men’s basketball team fell to the Soviet Union in the semi-finals, losing 82-76 (it is worth noting, though, that the women’s team won the gold that year). While an NBA golden era was reigning, the US Olympic team had won the first bronze in the program’s history. About eight months after the loss, a vote passed to change FIBA rules that had previously restricted professional basketball players from competing in the Olympics and Team USA history was forever changed. On their February 18, 1991 cover, Sports Illustrated presented a cover with Charles, Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Karl Malone, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan speculating a potential roster and granting the iconic moniker “The Dream Team.” The final roster was players Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Clyde Drexler, Patrick Ewing, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Christian Laettner, Karl Malone, Chris Mullin, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson, and John Stockton. There is a rich history of the Dream Team that cannot be summarized in this article, but the fact that the dominance of the 1992 USA men’s team elevated the game worldwide is the greatest outcome we continue to benefit from to this day. The card(s) shown here is from a 1991 Skybox set 3 card puzzle that fits together horizontally to show ten of the players (all but Laettner and Drexler).
Tamio “Tommy” Kono
An inductee into the US Olympic Hall of Fame, Kono was an unlikely candidate for becoming a world-renowned athlete. Born in 1930 in Sacramento, California, Kono had severe asthma as a child which limited his physical activity. In 1942 during World War II, Kono, being of Japanese descent, and his family were interred under Executive Order 9066 at the Tule Lake Segregation Center, a concentration camp in northern California. During his three and a half year stay at Tule Lake, the desert air alleviated his asthma and Kono was introduced to weightlifting by neighbor Noboru “Dave” Shimoda. Kono continued with weightlifting, but was drafted into the US Army in 1950 and set to be shipped to the Korean War as a cook. After someone discovered his Olympic potential, his orders were changed and he was stationed in San Francisco. Kono won gold at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, 1956 in Melbourne, and a silver in Rome in 1960. He was the only lifter to win Olympic medals in three different weight classes and only man to set world records in four different weight classes. He was also a winner of Mr. Universe three times and coached Olympic weightlifting teams for Mexico, West Germany, and the USA team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics. He passed away in 2016 at age 85 due to liver failure, but left an incredible legacy in American history. The card shown here is a base card of Kono from the 1991 Impel US Olympic Hall of Fame series.
Jesse Owens and Michael Johnson
In 1936, 22 year old Jesse Owens traveled to Germany under Nazi rule in order to perform in the Berlin Olympics for the USA track and field team. The grandson of a slave and son of a sharecropper, Owens accomplished many first for his family and Black history throughout his life. He received a scholarship to Ohio State University where he was unable to reside in the men’s dorm due to racial exclusion. He did, however, set many world records and was the first Black man selected as a captain for a Big Ten team. When he attended the 1936 Berlin Olympics, his mere presence was a political one for both Germany and the United States. With facism and racial superiority permeating Hitler’s reign, Owens performed with grace and ferocity winning four gold medals as a Black American in Nazi ruled Germany. Though Owens represented his country at the highest international stage, his return to the US was still one of discrimination and hostility due to his race. After residing in the unsegregated Olympic Village, Owens returned to his home country, forced to take a freight elevator at the New York City Waldorf hotel to his own reception due to the exclusion of Black visitors from the front entrance. After being snubbed by his own country’s leader at the time, in 1976 Owens was welcomed to the White House in order to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Fifty-six years later, at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Michael Johnson attended his first Olympic games and won his first gold medal. By the end of his professional career, he had achieved four Olympic gold medals, a track dedicated to him at the Nike campus, and is even launching his own track league, Grand Slam Track, in 2025. While far from perfect, the widespread changes in the track stars’ experiences thanks to Jesse Owens achievements is admirable. The tradition and evolution of Team USA athletes is perfectly exemplified in the Pass the Torch insert card of Jesse Owens and Michael Johnson from the 1996 Upper Deck USA Olympicards set.
Michael Phelps
Last but not least, we cannot talk about Team USA or the Olympics without the most decorated Olympian in history: Michael Phelps. Born in 1985 in Baltimore, Maryland, Phelps began his swimming career at age seven. Despite an ADHD diagnosis in sixth grade, Phelps continued to pursue swimming and rapidly started racking up achievements and records. At the age of 15 he qualified for the 2000 Sydney Olympics and became the youngest male in 68 years to join the US Olympic swim team, though he did not win any medals. By the time the 2004 Athens Olympics came around, the 6-foot-4-inch Phelps had won several medals at world championships since the previous Olympic games. In his first event in 2004, he won his first gold medal and set a new world record of 4:08.26 in the men’s 400m individual medley. He left Athens with a total of eight medals, six gold and two bronze at age 19. For the 2008 Beijing Olympics, continued to excel by breaking some of his own previously held world records and coming home with eight gold medals. In the 2012 London Olympics Phelps did show some signs of slowing down by failing to medal for the first time since the 2000 Olympics, but he still acquired four gold medals and two silver by the end of the games and left London as the most decorated Olympian ever. After the 2012 Olympics, Phelps insisted he was retiring, but returned to the sport in 2014 and appeared in the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics for his fifth and final Olympic competition. He was selected as the USA flag bearer for the Opening Ceremony and completed his final Olympics with five golds and one silver. The list of accomplishments by Michael Phelps the swimmer, the American, and the man are lengthy, but this small excerpt of his Olympic career shows how exceptionally he has represented on the world’s stage. The card selected is an insert, Games of the XXX Olympiad, of Phelps in action and celebrating from the Topps 2012 US Olympic Team and Olympic Hopefuls set of which he was also featured on the product packaging.
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