Top 150 Olympic Athletes: #64 - Wille Grut

Wille Grut

Sweden

Modern Pentathlon

Overall Ranks

#1 among Swedish Olympians

#1 among Modern Pentathletes

Olympic Results

1948

Individual - Gold

Total

Events - 1

Gold - 1

William Oscar Guernsey Grut was born on September 17, 1914 in Stockholm, Sweden, the son of Torben Grut, the architect who designed the Olympic stadium in Stockholm for the 1912 Games. His father had also been a very good tennis player, but Wille became a swimmer and won several national championships. He even made the 1936 Olympic team as a relay alternate, but didn't end up competing.

While he was in Berlin, he saw the modern pentathlon, and decided to switch events. World War II cancelled the next two Olympics, but in 1948, Grut was ready to compete. The first part of the modern pentathlon is the equestrian steeplechase, and Grut had experience riding horses in the army. He mastered the course, never missing a jump, and finishing in the fastest time to receive the top score for that portion.

The next part was a round-robin epee fencing tournament, where placement was determined by number of wins against the field. There were 44 competitors, so this took a couple of days, but in the end, Grut had won 28 matches, the most of anyone, and he again earned the top score.

The third portion was rapid-fire pistol shooting, with a total of 200 points possible per competitor. Grut hit 190, which put him in 5th place out of the field, while his nearest competition through the earlier events finished in 21st, dropping him way behind the lead. Next was a 300m freestyle swimming race, which again played to Grut's strength, and he easily won that portion, by more than 4 seconds over anyone else.

The final event was a 4000 meter cross country race. Grut was far from the lead in this portion, finishing more than a minute behind the leader, but he still came in 8th among 42 racers who finished, giving him the gold medal by a mile over anyone else. No other competitor finished in the top 10 in more than three portions, while Grut was top 10 in all of them, and won three parts outright. It remains the most dominant modern pentathlon performance in history, and makes him one of the greatest Olympians of all time.