American athlete Eddy Alvarez has the distinction of having won Olympic medals in two very different disciplines: baseball and speed skating. He helped Team USA to take silver in the 5000-metre relay in the latter event at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. In 2021, he was part of the men’s baseball team that won silver at the delayed 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. This makes him one of only six people in history to have won a Summer and Winter Olympics medal in different sports. Only one other baseball player has ever achieved the same feat, and that was over 100 years ago. Alvarez made his MLB debut in August 2020, playing for the Miami Marlins. After a spell with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2022, he is currently a free agent.

Alvarez was born in Miami, Florida, in January 1990. He began rollerskating aged five, and after finding he had a natural talent for it, graduated to ice skating aged seven. By the time he was 11, he’d become known as ‘Eddy the Jet’, winning the ‘triple crown’ of three national titles in inline, short-track, and long-track skating. However, during high school, he decided to drop skating and pursue a career in his other favourite sport: basketball. This didn’t last, however, and by the time he reached his senior year, the lure of skating was just too much, so he returned to skating.

Yet despite winning gold at the Junior World Championships in 2009, years of chronic knee pain were making it impossible for him to compete. He played baseball for a community college team but ultimately ended up needing knee surgery in 2012, which left him immobile for four weeks. Once recovered, he returned to skating and played a crucial part in helping Team USA to silver in Sochi in 2014. In doing so, he became the first Cuban-American to represent the USA in speed skating.