Case of the Mystery Cox

Who won the youngest gold medal in Olympic history, you might wonder. That's a very good question, and it gives you a lot to be proud of. However, the solution is not quite obvious. Diver Marjorie Gestring, who is 13 years and 267 days old, is acknowledged as being the youngest. But there was someone younger than her, that much is evident. Simply put, people don't know who he was.

This dates all the way back to the coxed pair rowing competition in the 1900 Summer Games in Paris. Three people made up each team: two rowers and a cox who served as their leader. The squad benefited from the cox being as light as possible because he did not perform any physical effort. As a result, the Dutch team decided to imitate the French team by using a young boy as their cox.

Prior to the race, they switched out their regular cox, Hermanus Brockmann, with an unidentified youngster, aged 7 to 10, who they randomly selected from the audience. That youngster became the youngest gold medalist in history when the Dutch team took first position. He posed for a picture with the victorious squad before vanishing into the crowd; no one even knows his name.