Olympic Games Gold Medalist Athlete. He was a member of the first United States Olympic team, and competed as a pistol shooter when the inaugural games were held in Athens, Greece in 1896. A member of a notable sporting family, his father, Charles Jackson Paine, had served as a General in the Union Army during the Civil War, and had thrice defended the America’s Cup yachting event for the United States. John Paine attended Harvard University, and was a member of the Boston Athletic Association (BAA), which was associated with the great majority of the thirteen American athletes comprising the United States team at the Athens Olympics. En route to Athens to participate in the games, he stopped in Paris, France and recruited his brother, Sumner Paine (who gave up medical practice to be a gunsmith for the Gastin-Renette Galleries in Paris), to also compete—both were world-class pistol event competitors. During the completion, onlookers noticed the Paine brothers paused to take a sips of whiskey from their pocket flasks when the tension was running high. Several eyewitness accounts stated that soon many of the other marksmen each had their own pocket flasks as well. During the Athens games, on April 10, 1896, John easily won the first competition, the 25-meter military pistol event—Sumner placed second after his brother. They so far outclassed all other competitors that the brothers agreed that whoever first won a gold medal would not enter the next event. And so, Sumner Paine won a gold medal in the 30-meter freestyle pistol event. John and Sumner thought it unsporting to enter any further events and withdrew from the remaining pistol events. John Paine returned to Boston, Massachusetts after the Olympics, but left again in 1898 to fight in the Spanish-American War. He later settled in a suburb of Boston, where he became a wealthy investment banker.