Donald Cohan
| Personal information | |||||||||||||
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| Full name | Donald Smith Cohan | ||||||||||||
| Born |
February 24, 1930 (age 87) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
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| Height | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) | ||||||||||||
| Weight | 181 lb (82 kg) | ||||||||||||
| Sport | |||||||||||||
| Sport | Sailing | ||||||||||||
| Event(s) | Dragon, Soling, and four other categories | ||||||||||||
| Achievements and titles | |||||||||||||
| National finals |
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Medal record
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Donald Smith "Don" Cohan (born February 24, 1930) is one of the leading yachtsmen in the U.S. He was the first Jew to compete at the highest levels of world yachting competitions and at the time of his active career, the only Jew to win an Olympic medal in yachting.
He won a bronze medal at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Years later, he twice defeated Hodgkin's disease. He came back to win a U.S. sailing championship at the age of 72.
Cohan graduated from Amherst College (cum laude; 1951). There, he was a member of Beta Theta Pi.
He then attended Harvard Law School. He practiced as an attorney, before going into business in real estate. He became President of Donesco Company, a real estate development firm.
Cohan began sailing in 1967 at age 37. He was on the U.S. team at the World Championships in 1969, 1970, and 1971. Cohan then won the 1972 Olympic trials, becoming the first Jew to be a member of the U.S. Olympic Team in sailing.
In the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, he was set to compete when the Munich Massacre resulted in the killing by terrorists of 11 Israeli athletes. All Jewish athletes were warned to leave, and two Israelis slated to compete in sailing were instructed to return home immediately. They handed Cohan their satin, blue and white triangular flag, emblazoned with "Sports Federation of Israel. XXth Olympiad Munich 1972," and said: "You're representing us now. Go win a medal for us."
Competing at the age of 42, he came from far back on the final day and earned a bronze medal as helmsman in the mixed three-person 29-foot (8.8 m) Dragon class, named Caprice. He earned the medal within just five years from when he began sailing, and was the first Jew to win an Olympic medal in sailing.
Cohan wrote: "The last act of [expletives deleted] [U.S. Olympic Committee head and International Olympic Committee president] Avery Brundage was to hang an Olympic medal around my neck." Brundage had been a Nazi sympathizer. He was notorious, among other things, for having pressured to have the only two Jews on the U.S. track team at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, sprinters Marty Glickman and Sam Stoller, removed at the very last moment on the morning of their 400-meter relay race, so as not to embarrass Hitler and the Nazis with a Jewish victory. Brundage later publicly praised the Nazi regime at a Madison Square rally.
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