#BlueStarByte: Who is the only U.S. winter Olympian to serve in the U.S. Congress?

The correct answer is B. Ice Hockey.

Several winter Olympians have run for United States Congress, including gold medalist figure skater Sarah Hughes and former National Football League player and Olympic bobsledder Herschel Walker. Yet Wendell “Wendy” Anderson, the former Governor of Minnesota and U.S. Senator, was the only one to serve in Congress.

A lifelong Minnesotan of Swedish descent, Anderson began his athletic career as a defenseman at the University of Minnesota and played on the U.S. men’s hockey team at the 1956 Winter Olympics, where the team won silver after losing to the Soviet Union 4–0. In 1972, while serving as Governor, he was drafted by the Minnesota Fighting Saints of the World Hockey Association (WHA) but declined to remain in office.

A member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, Anderson served as Minnesota’s 33rd Governor from 1971 to 1976. He had previously served as a State Representative and State Senator before winning the governorship in 1970 on a platform to reform public school financing. After the longest special legislative session in state history, he secured passage of the “Minnesota Miracle,” which shifted school funding from local property taxes to state funding and helped equalize resources between poorer and wealthier districts.