Welcome to the third installment of Olympic Wednesday! It’s time for the St. Louis Summer Olympics of 1904: only 10 countries competed, but they sent 650 athletes to do so. Chicago was supposed to host the Games, but St. Louis pushed back a centennial celebration of the Louisiana Purchase to 1904 and wanted to combine it with the Olympics. Drama ensued, and the end result was something similar to 1900 in Paris.

Editor’s Note: Few athletes from other nations competed due to travel challenges, and the home nation won a whopping 248 medals—while the second-place country (Germany) earned just 14 medals. However, Canadian athletes didn’t need to travel far to earn third place with 6 medals. Still, overall, this was somewhat of a disgraceful event for “American” reasons: alleged cheating, rampant cronyism, on-display racism, etc. Perhaps this was a sign of things to come, sadly.

Most Outstanding Male Athlete: Anton Heida, United States

American gymnast Anton Heida won 6 medals, including 5 golds: his 1 silver medal came in the parallel bars. Otherwise, he was the best in the individual all around, the horse vault, horizontal bar, and side vault events. Heida also helped the U.S. men to a gold in the team all-around competition. That’s as good as it gets, really, and he only lost the parallel bars by 1 point in the scoring system used at the time. So close!

Most Outstanding Female Athlete: Lida Scott Howell, United States

American archer Lida Scott Howell took home 3 golds at the 1904 Olympics: she was 46 years old. Her individual gold medals came in the Double Columbia and Double National events, respectively, and she helped her Cincinnati Archers group to a first-place finish in the team event, as well. Beyond the Games, she won 17 national championships of the 20 events she contested from 1883 and 1907. She was good.

Most Outstanding Male Team: United States Rowing

American rowers dominated the team events, winning double sculls, coxless pairs, coxless fours, and eights to clean sweep the gold medals. Overall, American men won 10 of the 11 medals available in these contests, including 3 silver medals and 3 bronze medals. Most of this was due to the aforementioned limitations for participants due to travel, but it is what it is. The U.S. contingent also was comprised of different club teams.

Most Outstanding Female Team: United States Archery

Led by Scott Howell, American women won the only female team gold event in this Olympiad: the archery team round, comprised of club members from Cincinnati (see above). Again, this makes it easy to choose this entity for this categorical nod, considering all the unique circumstances surrounding these Games.