Basketball legend Bill Russells gold medal from the 1956 Olympics sold for $587,500 as part of an auction of hundreds of his personal memorabilia items that ended Friday.<\/p>\n
Russell, then 22, scored a team-leading 14.1 points per game as the U.S. won all eight games in Melbourne by an average 53.5 points per game.<\/p>\n
Russell could have skipped the Melbourne Olympics, which were held during the NBA season in November and December, but instead delayed the start of his Boston Celtics career.<\/p>\n
Ever since I was a kid, there were social and physical icons that I always heard about. And you think of these things in awe. And when I got to the age where I qualified for the Olympics, I wanted to go, Russell said, according to the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Museum. Then, the honor of The Olympics was to compete. Not to win, but to compete. I really wanted that. If I hadnt made that Olympic basketball team, I was going to participate in the high jump. I was ranked second in the country in the high jump [Editors Note: Track and Field News ranked Russell third in the U.S. and seventh in the world in 1956], so either way, I was going to Melbourne. I wanted to be a part of that Olympic experience.<\/p>\n
The record price for an Olympic gold medal was set in 2013, when one of Jesse Owens four golds from the 1936 Berlin Games went for $1,466,574.<\/p>\n
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Bill Russells Olympic gold medal auctioned for $587,500 - Home of the Olympic Channel<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Basketball legend Bill Russells gold medal from the 1956 Olympics sold for $587,500 as part of an auction of hundreds of his personal memorabilia items that ended Friday. Russell, then 22, scored a team-leading 14.1 points per game as the U.S. won all eight games in Melbourne by an average 53.5 points per game Continue reading