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DICK'S Sporting Goods

The first foreign-born Olympic flag bearer for the U.S. didn’t even compete with his own given name.

Pádraig Mac Domhnaill was born and raised by a family of weight-throwers and strongmen in Ireland. But when he arrived in the U.S. in 1899 at the age of 21, the immigration officials changed his name to "McDonald" instead of the more common spelling of "McDonnell."

As a man who was nearly 300 pounds and clocking in at just about 6 feet 5 inches tall, the newly christened Patrick McDonald knew it was better to keep his head down than correct them — after all, misspelled names were hardly the greatest struggle for Irish immigrants at the time.

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