Winner's medal from the Los Angeles 1932 Summer Olympics awarded to American equestrian Hiram Tuttle, the only US medalist in individual dressage in history. Bronze, 55 mm, 76 gm, designed by Giuseppe Cassioli, minted by Whitehead & Hoag. The front, inscribed, "Xth Olympiad, Los Angeles, 1932," features a 'Seated Victory' with the Coliseum in the background; the reverse portrays a winner carried by jubilant athletes. Complete with its beige cardboard box, with Whitehead & Hoag label inside the lid and felt lining with lifting ribbon intact. Both the medal and box are exceedingly well-preserved examples. The medal was purchased in the 1990s from a Kansas antique dealer who had acquired both of Tuttle's medals from the auction of his wife's estate; accompanied by related provenance documentation and a copy of the article "Bronze medallist Tuttle was more than 'Merely an American Horseman,'" published by the International Society of Olympic Historians.
Hiram Tuttle earned bronze medals in the team and individual dressage events at Los Angeles 1932 Summer Olympics—making him the only American dressage rider to win an individual medal at any Olympic Games. After practicing law in Boston, he was called to duty during World War I and joined the US Army as a commissioned officer. His equestrian skills were largely self-taught, and he rose up the ranks to become the top dressage rider in the United States. Between 1930 and his retirement as a colonel in 1944, Tuttle held a post at the United States Army Cavalry School at Fort Riley, Kansas. He would go on to represent the United States again at the 1936 Games in Berlin—to a much less successful outcome—and went on to train many of the military dressage riders who followed in his footsteps.
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