Dear America: go vote.
No, seriously, if you’re an American of voting age currently reading this and you haven’t voted, please turn off your computer (or phone, or what have you) and go to your local polling location. Done? Cool.
One of our favorite Olympians in history, Bob Mathias, was only 17 when he won his first of two consecutive decathlon golds at the 1948 London Games. Unfortunately the teen champ then fell about 15 days shy of voting in the election when Truman famously defeated Dewey a couple months later.
We say unfortunately because we assume Mathias would have been one of the first people at the polls. And he likely would have tried to tip the scales in Dewey’s favor since he later became a four-term republican congressman from California, but we’ll never know for sure.
So with another London Olympics is in the books wanted to know which 2012 American gold medalists are still too young to vote. We’d like to imagine at least one of the seven teen gold medalists, who accounted for 11 golds between them, will follow in Mathias’s footsteps and one day represent her state on Capitol Hill.
Katie Ledecky, 15, Maryland – swimming gold in 800m freestyle
Gabby Douglas, 16, Iowa – gymnastics gold in team and all-around competition
McKayla Maroney, 16, California – gymnastics gold in team competition, silver in vault
Kyla Ross, 16, California – gymnastics gold in team competition
Jordyn Weiber, 17, Michigan – gymnastics gold in team competition
Missy Franklin, 17, Colorado – swimming gold in 100m and 200m back, and two relays
Claressa Shields, 17, New York – boxing gold in the middleweight division
Also notable: Lia Neal of New York won a swimming bronze in London at only 17, and our entire ladies table tennis team, which includes Ariel Hsing, Erica Wu, and Lily Zhang, is made up of 16-year-olds from California.
