Commentary: There's a surprisingly long list of Olympians with ties to Medina County

The lengthy column you are about to read — I hope — was originally supposed to be a two-sentence paragraph in a previous story. Several weeks ago, while working on an update on recent Medina High graduate Ella Nicholson, who has a very realistic chance of qualifying for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles as a member of USA Weightlifting, I thought it would be interesting to mention the three or four people I knew with Medina County ties who had experienced the Olympics at some level. To make sure I wasn't forgetting or overlooking anyone, I made a post on my Facebook page asking if people knew of any others. I was and they did, which is why you are about to read — again, I hope — about 15 people. And that's not counting former Homer and Black River boys basketball coach Lou Tsipis, who made Greece's national team at the age of 15, figure skater Tonia Kwiatkowski, a 1998 Olympic alternate who lives in Westlake and may or may not have driven through Brunswick at some point in her life, and figure skater Peggy Fleming, a gold medal winner at the 1968 Olympics in Grenoble, France whose aunt and uncle lived in Medina. There may well be others who deserve to be on this list, so if you know of anyone, please contact me at the email below. Pete Rademacher (boxing): Rademacher, who won a gold medal in the heavyweight division at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and was chosen by teammates to carry the American flag at the closing ceremonies, grew up in Washington state but spent most of his adult life living in Montville Township. A charter member of the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame in 1986 and inventor of the one-wheeled Rade-cycle, which he rode at hundreds of parades, Rademacher loved sharing his gold medal with people of all ages, had a million stories and jokes and was a frequent banquet speaker prior to passing away on June 4, 2020 at the age of 91. Rademacher almost didn't get to the gold medal bout, having been knocked down by South Africa's Daan Bekker in their semifinal meeting. "It was the first punch of the fight," he said. "I woke up face down on the canvas with my hands beside my hips. I felt like a tree that had come down. I looked over and my brother (John) is in the corner yelling, 'Get up, Pete, get up. You can't win the gold medal lying on your belly.'" Rademacher rallied to win that fight, then beat the Soviet Union's Lev Moukhine for the gold medal. He went on to fight heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson in his first pro fight and knocked down Patterson in the second round, but wound up hitting the canvas seven times and was knocked out in the sixth round. "When I dumped the Russian and they held my hand up, the Hungarian fighter jumped in the ring and lifted me up," Rademacher said. "I was bawling like a baby. I've never felt such absolute emotion." Du'aine Ladejo (track): As far as I know, Ladejo, who attended Medina High as an exchange student from England in 1987-88, is the only athlete from a county high school to have participated in the Olympics, having run on Great Britain's 4x400-meter relay at the 1992 Games in Barcelona and the 1996 Games in Atlanta. Ladejo, who won gold medals in the 400 and 4x4 at the 1994 European Championships in Helsinki, went on to star on the television show "Gladiators" under the alias of Predator. He helped Medina finish second at the 1988 Class AAA state meet by placing third in the 100 (10.74) and 200 (21.54) meters. Dominique Moceanu (gymnastics): Owner of the Dominique Moceanu Gymnastics Center in Medina, Moceanu was a member of the United States' gold medal-winning gymnastics team at the 1996 Games in Atlanta. Moceanu was expected to be a major medal contender in individual events but was slowed by a stress fracture in her right leg suffered at the U.S. Championships earlier in the year. She missed the Olympic Trials but was petitioned onto the Olympic team on the strength of her scores at the U.S. Championships. Mark Croghan (track): Croghan, 57, who graduated from Green High School in 1986 and has lived in Wadsworth since 1997, participated in the 3,000-meter steeplechase at the Summer Games on three occasions, finishing 13th in 1992 in Barcelona, fifth in 1996 in Atlanta and 16th in 2000 in Sydney, Australia. A five-time national champion in the event, Croghan also won two Big Ten and two NCAA titles while at Ohio State, where he met Cloverleaf grad Kim Malarkey, whom he married in 1996 while they were living in Columbus. "We wanted to move closer to family, but I wasn't moving to Cloverleaf and she wasn't moving to Green," Croghan said with a laugh. "Wadsworth was right in the middle. It was a great choice. It's a great community and we've been really happy here." Croghan, who coached track and cross country at Kent State for 12 years, works as an insurance broker. He and Kim have three grown children, all boys, who went through the Wadsworth school system. At Green, Croghan won the individual Class AAA cross country championship as a junior and earned state titles in track in the 1,600 and 3,200 as a senior, helping the Bulldogs capture the state team championship. Adolph Kiefer (swimming): Kiefer, who was born in 1918 and died in 2017 at the age of 98, lived in Wadsworth for a time after winning a gold medal for the U.S. in the 100 backstroke at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. For a time late in his life, he was the oldest living Olympic gold medal winner in the world. The son of German immigrants, Kiefer was born in Chicago, swam for the University of Texas and became the first person to break the one-minute mark in the 100 backstroke. He also was an inventor of products related to aquatics and in 1947 founded Adolph Kiefer and Associates, a swimming equipment company in Chicago. Brooklynn Crist (Paralympics): A 2021 Cloverleaf grad, Crist was a member of the gold medal-winning women's sled hockey team at the 2018 World Cup in the Czech Republic. With the Colts, she won eight Division I state titles in track and field, capturing the 100, 400 and 800 — the only wheelchair races held — as a freshman, the 100 and shot put as a sophomore and the 100, 400 and 800 again as a senior, when she also finished second in the shot. Her junior season was canceled by the COVID pandemic. Dave Wottle (track): A Canton native who attended Lincoln High, Wottle lived in Wadsworth for a time and served as grand marshal of a 1973 parade there after winning a gold medal in the 800 at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. Known for wearing a golf cap while competing and his ability to win after running well back in the pack, the early portion of Wottle's career at Bowling Green was plagued by injuries, but he eventually blossomed. He was primarily a miler until tying the world record (1:44.3) in the 800 while running the event as a speed workout at the 1972 Olympic Trials. Six days after the Olympic Trials, Wottle, now 74, got married, much to the annoyance of U.S. coach Bill Bowerman, who reportedly said, "He's traded a gold medal for a wife." Wottle then developed tendinitis in his left knee and was unable to train for a time, but that didn't stop him. Stunned by winning the gold medal, he was so excited he forgot to remove his cap while on the podium for the national anthem. Some interpreted that as a sign of protest, but he apologized at a news conference following the ceremony. Carl Abell (wrestling): A 1944 Medina grad, Abell was an Olympic alternate in 1952 and 1956 and was inducted into the Medina County Sports Hall of Fame in 1988. An active community member for decades who owned a number of convenience stores, Abell also wrestled and played football at Ohio State and wrestled internationally in Italy and Turkey. Tom Krueger (track and field): Though I have a cell phone number that goes to a message identifying the person as Krueger, a number of calls were not returned and I was never able to pin down specific information. A former assistant coach at Medina in track and field and football, Krueger is said by some who knew him to have been an alternate thrower — I don't know the specific event — on the 1980 U.S. team that boycotted the Summer Olympics in Moscow. I'm pretty sure he's living in Florida, where he served as a throws coach at the University of Central Florida for a time. Lou "L.B." Schaefer (swimming): Schaefer, 84, a Medina resident who has been married to wife Jean for 61 years, was an alternate for the U.S. in the backstroke for the 1960 Rome Olympics. At Ohio State, he won national titles in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke and swam on the winning 400 medley relay as the Buckeyes captured the 1962 NCAA championship. A 1959 Berea grad, Schaefer won 100 backstroke state titles as a sophomore, junior and senior while setting meet records his final two years. He also was on the winning 200 medley relay that set a meet record in 1959, when the state meet was one division and consisted of just 10 events. Amro Hassan (swimming): Hassan, 66, has lived in Medina since 1995, owns dual citizenship and was a member of the Egypt National Team. Born in Cairo, the capital of Egypt, his best chance of getting to the Olympics was in 1980 in Moscow, but that ended when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in late 1979 and he stopped competing at the highest level. Branislav "Benny" Karaulic (track): Karaulic, a Serbian who lived in Wadsworth for a time and coached youth soccer there, competed in the 400 hurdles and 4x4 for Yugoslavia at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, South Korea. He now lives in Atlanta. Rich Hamblen (wrestling): It took me awhile to locate the 80-year-old Hamblen, who participated in the 1976 Olympic Trials at 62 kilograms (136.7 pounds), but it turns out he lives less than a half-mile down the street from me in Medina. He recently celebrated his 60th anniversary with wife Teddy. Vibrant and still in excellent shape, Hamblen, a 1963 West Tech graduate who helped coach Medina wrestling for a number of years, downplayed his involvement in the Olympic Trials at the Cleveland Public Auditorium, saying organizers needed wrestlers to fill out some weight classes. "This was the old Trials," he said with a laugh. "Now I couldn't carry the water bucket. It's a whole different animal. I was good, but not of that caliber." Steve Smykal (speed skating): Like Krueger, I could not reach Smykal, a 2013 Highland grad who played tennis and soccer for the Hornets. After first going to Denison to play tennis, he ended up at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, started pursuing speed skating and took part in the 2018 Olympic Trials. Mark Broadwater (media): A 1971 Cloverleaf grad, the 72-year-old Broadwater, who now lives in Sierra Madre, Calif., served as a cameraman for NBC at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta and 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. "I worked on two very high-end events — archery and shooting," he joked of the Summer Games. "I was there for two weeks and made some money, so what the hell." Broadwater, who also worked in Israel, Egypt and Thailand prior to retiring, won a group Emmy for his work at the Winter Olympics, but another factor was just as important. "I was there for six weeks, ate a lot of sushi and made $22,000," he said. "When I got back I got braces for my son and paid some bills." That folks, is all I came up with. Many thanks to former Medina trainer and longtime basketball public address announcer Jim Wienczkowski, former Gazette coworker Lisa (Grayson) Moore, longtime Wadsworth girls basketball assistant Mark Postak and former Gazette freelancer Richard Doyle for their assistance. If you have information on someone else, let me know. Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on X.