Billy Fiske was something of an international Renaissance man. By the time he arrived at Trinity Hall to study Economics and History, the young New Yorker had already represented the US at the 1928 winter games in St. Moritz, steering the five-man bobsleigh team to gold. He was only sixteen years old and he remained the youngest winter sports gold medallist until the victory of Finnish ski-jumper Toni Nieminen in 1992.

1928 was the only time in Olympic history that the bob was run as a five-man event. Almost unbelievably, Fiske’s team-mates were recruited at the last minute by way of an advert in a Parisian newspaper. One of them, “Tipper” Grey - a man almost as remarkable as Fiske himself - wasn’t even an American. He was a 40-year-old English entertainer (fairly well known in his homeland, and presumably gifted at accents) who passed himself off as an American for the event. In a story every bit the equal of Cool Runnings, Fiske, little more than a schoolboy, steered his unlikely crew to victory in treacherous conditions.

Billy Fiske matriculated in autumn 1928, and succeeded in combining his studies with his sporting career. He was back at the Olympics in 1932 – along with the intrepid Grey, who was still not a US citizen – to take gold in the now four-man event at Lake Placid. It was his last appearance in the Olympics, aged only 21 - Fiske declined to compete in the 1936 games at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, foreshadowing the events of the better-known Berlin Summer Olympics that year.

In the mid 1930s, in partnership with Ted Ryan, Fiske opened a ski lodge at Aspen and was instrumental in the early development of the downhill resort. He also had a brief career in London as a banker, his father’s profession.

In keeping with his flair for living fast, Billy Fiske was sadly to die young. In March 1940 he signed up for the RAF, pretending (perhaps inspired by his old team-mate, Grey) to be Canadian. One of seven airmen from the then-neutral US to fly in the Battle of Britain, he was shot down in aerial combat in August 1940. He managed to land, but his plane was on fire, and he died of his burns. He was 29.