COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) Denmark's sports confederation says yachtsman Paul Elvstrom, who won four straight Olympic gold medals between 1948 and 1960, 13 world championships and seven European championships, has died.
The confederation says Elvstrom - elected Denmark's sportsman of the century in 1996 - died Wednesday. He was 88.
When Elvstrom stopped competition after the 1988 Olympics in South Korea, he put an end to a 40-year career that took him to eight Olympic Games.
He grabbed his first gold medal in 1948 in the one-man Firefly class, and made the top of the Olympic podium again in the Finn class in 1952, 1956 and 1960.
Born in northern Copenhagen in 1928, he trained as a mason, an architect and a real estate agent. In his later years, he struggled with Parkinson's disease.
