On today’s date in 1976, Canadian high-jumper Greg Joy took home a silver medal on the final day of that year’s Summer Olympics in Montréal.
In rainy weather, Joy defeated U.S.-born favourite Dwight Stones, who placed third, with a leap of 2.23 metres. Poland’s Jacek Wszoła won gold with a jump of 2.25 metres.
Two years later, Joy broke the world record for high jump with a leap of 2.31 metres.
1976 ATHLETE MEDALS
The Royal Canadian Mint produced the athlete medals for the 1976 Summer Olympics.
Featuring a design by Florentine artist Giuseppe Cassioli used since the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, the medals’ obverse depicts the traditional goddess of victory holding a palm in her left hand and a winner’s crown in her right hand. The design was chosen after a competition organized by the International Olympic Committee in 1921.
For the Montréal Games, the figure of victory is accompanied by the specific inscription, “XXIe Olympiade Montréal 1976.”
The reverse was intentionally designed as bare. It comprises a stylized laurel crown – a symbol of victory since the “Games of Antiquity” – and the emblem of the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montréal. Each of the gold, silver and bronze medals measured 60 millimetres in diameter and six millimetres in thickness.