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Amy Van Dyken

Amy Van Dyken (1973–) is a six-time Olympic gold medalist and former competitive swimmer for the United States. In 1996 she became the first American woman to win four gold medals at a single Olympic Games. Despite an ATV crash in 2014 that left her…

Billy Fiske

Billy Fiske (1911–40) was a two-time Olympian who drove the US bobsled team to gold medals in the 1928 and 1932 Winter Olympics. A founder of Colorado’s ski industry, Fiske saw the potential for the state to rival the great winter resorts of Europe and…

Byron White

Byron White (1917–2002) was Colorado’s first-ever US Supreme Court justice, serving from 1962 to 1993, as well as a nationally known college athlete for the University of Colorado and a star pro football player. As a justice, White was remembered for his…

Chauncey Billups

Chauncey Billups (1976–) is a retired National Basketball Association (NBA) player who played for seven teams, including the Denver Nuggets, before he retired in 2014. A Colorado native, Billups was a star player at the University of Colorado–Boulder…

Colorado Rockies

The Colorado Rockies arrived in Denver in 1993 and is the only professional baseball team in the Rocky Mountain West. The Rockies compete in Major League Baseball’s National League West Division. Having made the MLB playoffs three times in their short…

Denver Broncos

Denver is home to many professional sports teams, but the city and state’s major sports obsession is without question the Denver Broncos, its professional football team and three-time champions of the National Football League (NFL). The Broncos play home…

Eddie Eagan

Edward “Eddie” Patrick Francis Eagan (1897–1967) is the only person to have won gold medals in two different sports at the summer and winter Olympics. Born in Denver, Eagan attended Longmont High School and the University of Denver before going on to…

Glenn E. Morris

One of the most highly accomplished athletes in Colorado history, Glenn E. Morris (1912–1974) was raised in the small rural town of Simla in southeastern Colorado. Morris was a standout in high school and college football and track. But his greatest…

Jack Dempsey

William Harrison “Jack” Dempsey (1895–1983) was the US heavyweight boxing champion from 1919 to 1926 and a major American sporting icon of the twentieth century. Nicknamed “The Manassa Mauler” after his Colorado hometown, Dempsey was so popular that he…

John Elway

John Elway (1960–) is a former National Football League quarterback and general manager of the Denver Broncos. Elway won two Super Bowls as a Broncos player (1997 and 1998) and a third (2015) as the team’s general manager. As perhaps the most popular and…

Larry Walker

Larry Walker (1966–) is a retired professional baseball player who played right field for the Montreal Expos, Colorado Rockies, and St. Louis Cardinals. In 2020 he became the first Colorado Rocky to be elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame…

Mallory Pugh

Mallory Diane Pugh (1998–) is an American professional soccer player for the United States Women’s National Team (USWNT) and the Washington Spirit of the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL). One of the most accomplished Colorado soccer players in…

Matt Carpenter

Matthew Carpenter (1964–) is a mountain runner best known for his performances at high-altitude races such as the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon, where he set the course record in 1993, and the Leadville Trail 100 Run, where he set the record in 2005. In…

Rick Trujillo

Richard “Rick” Trujillo (1948–) is a Colorado mountain runner best known for starting the Imogene Pass Run in 1974 and winning the Pikes Peak Ascent and Marathon{ six times in the 1970s, long before trail and mountain running became popular activities…

Rocky Mountain League

The Rocky Mountain League was a Class D baseball league that fielded four semi-professional teams in southern Colorado in 1912. Founded in the wake of the departure of a previous team from Pueblo, the league fell into immediate financial trouble and…

Saul Halyve

Saul Halyve was a Hopi distance-running champion raised near Grand Junction who exploded onto the athletic scene in the early 1900s. Although Halyve would never compete in an Olympics due to a multitude of factors, his accomplishments match and possibly…

Stan Kroenke

Stan Kroenke (1947–) is a Missouri-based billionaire whose extensive portfolio of real estate and sports franchises includes Denver’s Nuggets (basketball), Avalanche (hockey), Rapids (soccer), and Mammoth (lacrosse), as well as Ball Arena, Dick’s…