50 Guilders Olympics 1988 / Anthony Nesty

Anthony Nesty's gold medal in the 100m butterfly at the 1988 Seoul Olympics was the first Olympic gold won by any athlete from Suriname — and, more strikingly, the first by a Black swimmer in Olympic history. He beat American favorite Matt Biondi by one-hundredth of a second. The upset was significant enough that Suriname issued this coin within the same year, an unusually fast turnaround for a commemorative program from a small central bank.

Nesty had trained in Florida rather than Suriname, whose facilities could not support elite competitive swimming.