Reach for the Gold
Delaware's Gold Medal Winners
Frank Shakespeare the first Delawarean to win Olympic gold, earned his medal in the bow seat of the 1952 U.S. coxed eight rowing team in Helsinki. He was inducted into the Delaware Sports Hall of Fame in 1982.
Although born in Philadelphia, Shakespeare and his family moved to Dover soon afterwards and spent part of each summer at Dewey Beach. In June 1949, 19-year-old Shakespeare entered the U.S. Naval Academy.
Failing to make the Academy’s basketball team, Shakespeare successfully tried out for crew. After a stellar 1952, the team was selected to represent the United States in the Olympics, won the gold medal and was dubbed the “Great Eight” by Life magazine. The year marked the first time the Soviet Union, which won silver in the event, participated in the games.
In 1996, at age 65, Shakespeare carried the Olympic Torch as it passed through Wilmington on its way to the 1996 games in Atlanta.
Coincidentally — or not — Shakespeare’s status as Delaware’s only gold medalist ended that year with Dionna Harris on the US team that won the first gold medal in the debut of women’s softball. During the Atlanta 1996 games, she had a .409 batting average. Since then, softball, as well as baseball, has been in and out of the Olympics; it will be absent this summer in Paris, but is expected back for the 2028 games in Los Angeles.
Harris, who was born in Wilmington, was a four-time All-Conference and All-State player while at Delcastle High School and played in the Senior All-Star game. She was twice an All-American while at Del Tech Community College, then went on to Temple University where she was twice Atlantic 10 All-Conference and first team Northeast All-American and was selected Atlantic 10 Player of the Year.
Harris was inducted into of the Delaware Sports Museum and Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Temple University Hall of Fame in 2004. Delcastle High School retired her number 11 jersey.
Delaware’s most recent gold medalist is Elena Delle Donne, who won a gold medal for the U.S. in women’s basketball in Rio in 2016.
Delle Donne was born in Wilmington, attended Ursuline Academy and is a University of Delaware graduate. She joined the Chicago Sky in 2013 as the second overall pick and helped them reach their first WNBA final. In 2017, she was traded to the Washington Mystics after saying she wanted to be closer to her family. She led the Mystics to their first WNBA finals in 2018 and their first (and so far only) championship the following year. She has suffered back and knee injuries and stepped away from basketball for this year.
She played in seven of eight games at the Rio Olympics, missing one game due to an eye injury. She averaged 8.6 points per game, including 10 points against Spain in the gold medal game.
Delle Donne opted out of the 2020 Covid season and skipped the 2021 Olympics in Tokyo due to back issues. She returned to basketball in 2022 and was a WNBA All Star in 2023.
An asterisk goes to David "Dave" Charles Johnson. Johnson was born in Wilmington and took up swimming his sophomore year at Archmere Academy with famed coach Bob Mattson at the Wilmington Athletic club (Archmere didn’t have a swim team). He went on to compete for a spot on the U.S. swim team for the 1968 games in Mexico City.
Despite breaking his arm just two months before the Olympics, Johnson continued to train with his cast protected by a plastic bag and made the team as an alternate.
At the games, he swam for the gold medal-winning U.S. relay teams in the preliminary heats of the men's 4×100-meter freestyle and men's 4×200-meter freestyle. He did not receive a medal in either event because only relay swimmers who competed in the event final were eligible for medals under the 1968 rules. At any Olympics since 1984, Johnson would have been a gold medalist.
Johnson graduated from Yale Medical School and became an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine. He was a team doctor for the US team at the 1980 Winter Olympics.