Olympic Gold Medalist Athlete. He will be remembered as an American a gold medalist in the 4x100 meter medley and a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle competitions during the 1960 Summer Games in Rome. Born Lance Melvin Larson, he attended the University of Southern California, where he made a name for himself when he received Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) titles in freestyle, fly, and IM events, in addition to setting five world records. With Larson in Lane 4 and Australia's John Devitt in Lane 3, a dead-heat race with judges using stopwatches in the 100-meter freestyle began. At the end of the race, the audience thought Larson had made Gold, yet after the judges compared their times, a decision was made that the Gold was given to Devitt and Larson the Silver. There was a tie in the judges' timing results; nothing like this had happened in Olympic history. In the end, the West German head judge Hans Runströmer made the controversial decision of who would receive the Gold: Devitt by a mere fraction of a second. For years, the United States appealed the ruling to the International Olympic Committee, but the decision stood. Since the judges' timepiece readings did not match, this became a turning point in Olympic timekeeping, and by 1969, all Olympic timekeeping was electronic, eliminating this error. In the 21st century, a YouTube video documents Larson's hand touching the wall first, yet the video was rejected as evidence during the appeal. After this competition, he swam the fairly new butterfly leg in the 4x100-meter medley relay, setting a new world record of 4:05.4 for the United States team and receiving the Gold Medal. He left competitive swimming in 1961. After his Olympic experience, he graduated from USC in 1962, earned a degree in dentistry from the University of the Pacific in 1964, and joined the United States Naval Dentist Corp, serving as a lieutenant until the late 1960s before opening his successful dental practice. He was inducted into the International Swimmers Hall of Fame in 1980 as an Honored Swimmer. He married and had four sons, who were involved in swimming and other sports. He married for a second time in the 1990s and adopted two daughters. He retired from his dental practice in 2014. Even in his elderly years, he gave interviews about his Olympic experiences, including one for his 80th birthday for "Swimming World" magazine. At age 83, he died of the complications of pneumonia. With a very short obituary, the details of his death and burial were kept private.