US Olympic freestyle gold medalist Henry Wittenberg dead at 91
Henry Wittenberg, a U.S. freestyle wrestler who won a gold and a silver medal at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics, died Tuesday at age 91.
The New York Times described Wittenberg as “one of America’s greatest wrestlers while a New York City police officer.”
According to the obituary in the New York Times, Wittenberg was one of the first U.S. wrestlers to work out with weights, over the objections of the 1948 Olympic team coach — and head wrestling coach at Oklahoma State University — Art Griffith, who was concerned about weightlifting causing an athlete to become “muscle-bound” (a prevailing attitude at the time in many sports).
