Yale Alumni Magazine hed
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İYale Alumni Magazine

Eddie Eagan '21PhB (1898-1967). In 1919, Eagan won the U.S. amateur heavyweight championship, and in the 1920 summer Olympics, he won a gold medal as a light-heavyweight. Later, as a Rhodes Scholar, Eagan became the first American to win the British amateur boxing championship. Time magazine reported that, as an Oxford boxer, Eagan clobbered a Cambridge opponent who said from the mat: “I’ll get up -- eventually—but not until that man has left Oxford.” (Eagan himself once had the honor of being knocked cold in an exhibition bout by Jack Dempsey.)

Twelve years after winning his first Olympic gold, Eagan won another as a member of the U.S. bobsled team in 1932. No one before or since has won gold medals at both summer and winter Olympics. Eagan, who also had a successful career as an assistant U.S. attorney, was New York’s boxing commissioner from 1945 to 1951. His stamp was issued in 1990.