Happy Athletes Survive Longer

[DoubleRBar]

Happy birthday today (Saturday) to two Olympic champions who died 44 days apart.

One of these two people was 35 years old when the other was born.

They earned a total of two Olympic gold medals and one Olympic silver medal.

The older of the two died 17 days before turning 95 years old and the younger athlete was 60 when death came.

Our birthday athletes were born a total of 161 years ago today and were born in different continents.

Both individuals competed in a total of four Olympic Games and none of those four Olympic Games were in South America, Africa, Antarctica, or North America.

Can you name both of these Olympic champions on this penultimate Saturday of January?

Please give it a try.

[tandfman]

HA could be steepler Horace Ashenfelter. But I don't think he won an Olympic silver medal, so SL would have won a gold and a silver.

[DoubleRBar]

Horace Ashenfelter it is and good going, tandfman. Ashenfelter won the steeplechase at the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games in a very dramatic race. He also ran the steeplechase in Melbourne in 1956, however he did not make the final. A graduate of Penn State, Horace Ashenfelter died in January of 2018, just 13 days before our younger birthday athlete.
Thank you, tandfman.

[Trickstat]

I think I've got it from the clue as to where the Games were held. The younger athlete, by my calculations, was born in 1958, which means that he or she would have been 26 at the time of the LA Olympics, but didn't compete in them. This made me think that maybe their country was part of the boycott? That, plus the letters SL make me think it could be Sergey Litvinov.

[DoubleRBar]

Sergey Litvinov was born 63 years ago today. Very well done, Trickstat. Litvinov took the Olympic silver medal at the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games hammer throw. As Trickstat stated, Litvinov did not compete in Los Angeles (1984). He did win the Olympic gold medal in the hammer throw in Seoul (1988). Sergey Litvinov died in February of 2018 at the age of 60.

Thank you, Trickstat.