From dominant Hall of Fame baseball pitchers to Olympic gold medal-winning swimmers, these professional athletes from Colorado have done the state proud.
Few things bring us together quite like sports. People from all backgrounds and interests uniting over a shared bond with a team or country is a beautiful thing. And when you’re one of the athletes people are cheering for, you can cement yourself in legendary status.
The Centennial State has no shortage of success when it comes to professional sports. Dive into nine athletes from Colorado and their accomplishments.
Goose Gossage
Sadly, baseball pitcher Richard Michael Gossage’s real name was not “Goose,” but it’s quite an excellent name. He received it from teammate Tom Bradley, who noticed Gossage’s neck extended similar to that of a goose as he looked for a sign from his catcher. And much like a goose on the attack, Gossage was plenty intimidating on the mound, sporting a fierce mustache and a fastball that topped 100 miles per hour.
Gossage was an early pioneer of today’s closers, which were called “firemen” back in the day. He finished with a 124-107 record while racking up 310 saves and 1,502 strikeouts for his career. Over his 22 MLB seasons, Gossage led the league in saves three times, was a nine-time All-Star, and won the World Series in 1978 as a member of the New York Yankees. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008. Gossage still lives in his birthplace of Colorado Springs, where he sponsors youth sports leagues and previously owned a restaurant chain called Burgers-N-Sports.
Amy Van Dyken
Born in Englewood, Amy Van Dyken’s rise to stardom seemed improbable at first. She had severe asthma throughout her childhood and into her adult life. After doctors suggested she should swim to strengthen her lungs, she soon found out she was pretty darn good at it. At the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Van Dyken won four gold medals, the first American woman to ever accomplish that during a single Olympic Games. She added two more gold medals during the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, bringing her Olympic total medal count to six, all golds. She’s one of the most accomplished athletes from Colorado.
Swimming World named Van Dyken its American Swimmer of the Year in 1995 and 1996, and she’s been inducted into both the Colorado Sports Hall of Fame and the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. Upon retiring from swimming, Van Dyken participated in triathlons and has been a radio and sideline broadcaster in multiple markets. In 2014, she suffered an ATV accident that paralyzed her from the waist down, though she’s remained resilient and has become a motivational speaker.
Roy Halladay
Roy “Doc” Halladay was born in Denver and grew up in the nearby suburb of Arvada. He loved baseball at a young age and led his team, Arvada West High School, to a 6A state championship in 1994. The Toronto Blue Jays selected him with the 17th pick of the 1995 amateur draft, and Halladay skipped college to follow his Major League Baseball dream.
It turned out to be a smart decision. Halladay was a nine-time All-Star, twice led the league in wins, and won the Cy Young Award in 2003 and 2010. He threw a perfect game on May 29, 2010—an accomplishment that’s happened only 24 times in MLB history—and tossed a no-hitter in the postseason that same year. Growing up, Halladay’s father was a pilot, and Roy developed an interest in flying alongside his passion for baseball. Tragically, Halladay died in 2017 after crashing his amphibious plane into the Gulf of Mexico. He was 40 years old. In 2019, he was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Missy Franklin
Missy Franklin was born in Pasadena, CA, though she grew up in Centennial, southeast of Denver. At age five, while most of us were still figuring out how to properly wear our floaties, Franklin was developing a love of swimming. She joined the Colorado Stars travel swim team by age seven. Later, she attended Regis Jesuit High School in Aurora and graduated in 2013, one year after she won five medals (including four golds) at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Those accomplishments earned her multiple “Swimmer of the Year” awards from the sport’s top organizations. Because she wanted to complete her college career, Franklin decided not to accept any prize money during her Olympics stardom.
Over her competitive career across the Olympics, World Championships, and Pan Pacific Championships, Franklin earned 28 medals in international competition: 17 golds, six silvers, and five bronzes. She also set four world records along the way. Franklin retired at only 23 and now serves as an ambassador for the USA Swimming Foundation while raising two young daughters with her husband, fellow swimmer Hayes Johnson.
Chauncey Billups
Chauncey Billups was born in Denver and attended George Washington High School, receiving Colorado Mr. Basketball nods three times. He stayed in the state for college, attending the University of Colorado and leading the Buffaloes to the school’s first NCAA Tournament in 28 years. During the 1997 NBA Draft, the Boston Celtics selected Billups with the third overall pick, though he bounced around four teams in his first five seasons, including a 58-game stint with the Denver Nuggets. He’d later return to Denver, where he once was the recipient of one of the most obscure traveling calls you’ll ever see.
Billups is perhaps most well-known for two things. First, in 2004, he was the point guard for the Detroit Pistons team that won the NBA Finals, defeating the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers in five games to secure the Larry O’Brien Trophy. More recently, he was arrested in October 2025 during an FBI gambling investigation that also involved multiple crime families in New York. The arrest included charges that Billups participated in high-stakes poker games that he knew were rigged, defrauding victims of about $7 million.
Bobby Unser
Talk to any auto racing fan, and they’ll be familiar with the Unser family of racers. The Unsers have collectively won nine Indianapolis 500 events, with Bobby Unser claiming victory three times across three decades, in 1968, 1975, and 1981. Unser only lived in Colorado Springs for about a year before his family moved to Albuquerque, NM, though he maintained a tight connection with the state.
Namely, Unser dominated the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. It was his first-ever victory as a racer, and over 30 runs of the twisting and turning course, he won 13 times (including class victories). In 1996, Unser and a friend were snowboarding in Colorado when a storm blinded them both. Unser and his friend spent two days and nights in temperatures below zero degrees Fahrenheit before eventually being found in a barn. Unser was charged with a misdemeanor for operating a snowmobile in a National Forest Wilderness Area. He died at 87 years old as a racing legend and is a member of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, International Motorsports, National Sprint Car, and Colorado Sports Halls of Fame.
Michelle Waterson-Gomez
Growing up, Michelle Waterson-Gomez wanted to participate in gymnastics. However, any gymnast knows those classes can be expensive, so she instead turned to karate. It was a smart move, because she quickly achieved black belt status. Beyond karate, Waterson-Gomez, who was born in Colorado Springs and raised in Aurora, has also trained in Muay Thai, kickboxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, boxing, wrestling, and wushu. She appeared on the reality show “Fight Girls,” which eventually led to her starting a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) career.
Waterson-Gomez won 12 of her first 15 fights and ultimately won the Invicta FC Atomweight Championship in 2013. She was ranked the top women’s atomweight fighter in the world in 2013 and 2014. Over the past decade and a half, Waterson-Gomez has appeared in several films and television shows, including “MacGruber,” “Fight Night,” and “The Cleaning Lady.”
Aaron Smith
The Pittsburgh Steelers are tied for the most Super Bowl victories in NFL history with six, and Aaron Smith has been on two of those championship squads. The defensive end spent his entire 13-year career with the Steelers, racking up 481 total tackles, 44 sacks, and nine fumble recoveries. For his efforts, he was named to the team’s Hall of Honor.
Before his NFL career began, Smith grew up in Colorado Springs. He attended Sierra High School before playing college ball with the Northern Colorado Bears. He led the team in sacks in each of his four college seasons and still holds the school record for most sacks in a single season (22). He’s been named to both the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame and the Northern Colorado Hall of Fame.
Jack Dempsey
Chances are you weren’t alive to see William Henry “Jack” Dempsey fight—he retired in 1927, after all—but he was one of the most successful athletes from Colorado and a boxing pioneer. True to his nickname, the Manassa Mauler was born in Manassa, a small southern Colorado town, as one of 13 children. He left home when he turned 16 and spent time hopping between freight trains, hoping to find a way to support himself. He’d challenge fighters in saloons, claiming, “I can’t sing, I can’t dance, but I can lick anyone in the room.”
Though he fought before then, Dempsey first began competing under his name in 1914, when he was 19 years old. Over the next 13 years, he participated in 84 official fights. He ended his career with 63 wins and 6 losses, 53 of those victories coming via knockout. In 1950, Dempsey was voted as the greatest fighter of the past 50 years by the Associated Press, and he was also a lucrative draw. He generated boxing’s first million-dollar gate in 1921 (against Georges Carpentier); six years later, he fought Gene Tunney in a match that generated over two million dollars.
