[DC 86]

and five more if you count Eric Heiden (his medals were before his time in the med school but we count medal from athletes who won them in high school and matriculated at Stanford but had no medals while at Stanford)

Heiden did win his medals prior to coming to Stanford but he has an undergraduate degree (BS 1984 in Biology) as well as his MD (awarded 1991). He transferred from Wisconsin as an undergrad. Still a relatively shaky connection but stronger than if he had graduated from Wisconsin undergrad and only attended the Med school.

are you implying that being a transfer is what makes the connection shaky (asks this transfer who never considered my connection to Stanford shaky, of course I was never going to win an Olympic medal (or any other sort of award for athletic achievement)).......makes me now wonder if there is a secret handshake taught freshman year that I never learned to identify "real alums"....



and a follow up on who you think should count as Stanford Olympic medalists, one of my classmates won an Olympic medal in 1976 before enrolling in 1978, she missed the 1980 Olympics due to the boycott (she was on the 1980 Olympic team and she did compete for Stanford while an undergrad), does that make her connection shaky too given she won as a high school student and not a Stanford student?

The transfer status is irrelevant. What makes it shaky is that he trained for and won his five gold medals while he was a student at Wisconsin, and transferred to Stanford after the fact when he was fully retired from speed skating.

What if Katie Ledecky retired from swimming today, and then transferred to Harvard to finish her education, and then Harvard included her seven gold medals in their press releases about Harvard athletes at the Olympics? that is more or less Heiden's case.

My own feeling is that if someone is a Stanford athlete then it doesn't matter if they win a medal before or after they are were enrolled in school. It's those athletes whose time at Stanford was strictly as a regular student (e.g. Shawn Green) who are in a different category. Nobody would include Green's 328 home runs in a tabulation of how many homers Stanford has recorded in MLB, just as nobody would claim Bill Walton as one of our most accomplished basketball players. I understand that Heiden was a cyclist while he was at Stanford but of course his Olympic accomplishments were exclusively in speed skating.

Ultimately I am in favor of counting as many as possible since it's a PR exercise and other schools are very loose in how they make their tabulations, so if Stanford adopted a stricter formula it would be handicapping itself relative to other schools.

[DC 86]

and five more if you count Eric Heiden (his medals were before his time in the med school but we count medal from athletes who won them in high school and matriculated at Stanford but had no medals while at Stanford)

Heiden did win his medals prior to coming to Stanford but he has an undergraduate degree (BS 1984 in Biology) as well as his MD (awarded 1991). He transferred from Wisconsin as an undergrad. Still a relatively shaky connection but stronger than if he had graduated from Wisconsin undergrad and only attended the Med school.

are you implying that being a transfer is what makes the connection shaky (asks this transfer who never considered my connection to Stanford shaky, of course I was never going to win an Olympic medal (or any other sort of award for athletic achievement)).......makes me now wonder if there is a secret handshake taught freshman year that I never learned to identify "real alums"....



and a follow up on who you think should count as Stanford Olympic medalists, one of my classmates won an Olympic medal in 1976 before enrolling in 1978, she missed the 1980 Olympics due to the boycott (she was on the 1980 Olympic team and she did compete for Stanford while an undergrad), does that make her connection shaky too given she won as a high school student and not a Stanford student?

The transfer status is irrelevant. What makes it shaky is that he trained for and won his five gold medals while he was a student at Wisconsin, and transferred to Stanford after the fact when he was fully retired from speed skating.

What if Katie Ledecky retired from swimming today, and then transferred to Harvard to finish her education, and then Harvard included her seven gold medals in their press releases about Harvard athletes at the Olympics? that is more or less Heiden's case.

My own feeling is that if someone is a Stanford athlete then it doesn't matter if they win a medal before or after they are were enrolled in school. It's those athletes whose time at Stanford was strictly as a regular student (e.g. Shawn Green) who are in a different category. Nobody would include Green's 328 home runs in a tabulation of how many homers Stanford has recorded in MLB, just as nobody would claim Bill Walton as one of our most accomplished basketball players. I understand that Heiden was a cyclist while he was at Stanford but of course his Olympic accomplishments were exclusively in speed skating.

Ultimately I am in favor of counting as many as possible since it's a PR exercise and other schools are very loose in how they make their tabulations, so if Stanford adopted a stricter formula it would be handicapping itself relative to other schools.