Extensive research unearthed new histories of female sporting heroes and anti-heroes

Gerd von der Lippe
University of South-Eastern Norway

Jean Williams, Professor of Sport at the institute of Sport and Human Sciences, University of Wolverhampton, UK, has written a historical book about Britain’s Olympic women from 1896 until the 2012 Olympic Games in London.  The material to tell this story has been obtained from different sources; oral history interviews, autobiographies, individual interviews, and official documentation, in order to picture important parts of the lives of female athletes. The focus is on nationality and gender – or rather the lack of gender, with only one sex: men. I personally like the irony of her sentence: “…it is clear that the Olympic movement has not exactly been begging women to be involved this last hundred years or so.” (p. 9.) Class, politics and amateurism are also to some extent important perspectives in her book, although amateurism still remains a contested and constantly redefined ideal today.

The author presents several British female athletes during most Olympic Games, including their names, family and different competitions they were involved in. In this review only a few of them are mentioned.

As we know, modern Olympic Games started in Athens in 1896 as a recreation of the Hellenic Olympic tradition. Before the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, the Games were arranged together with exhibitions and fairs showing the world the latest technological advances.

The British Olympic Association (BOA) was formed in 1905, nine years after the forming of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). According to Williams, the first women took part in the Olympic Games in Paris in 1900 from 14 May to 28 October. It is uncertain how many and in what events. However, there is a picture of a women in a fencing competition in Vanity Fair. The first British women to win a first place – but no gold medal – was Charlotte Cooper in tennis. Playing tennis in her club, she is supposed to have ridden a long distance to and from her training with her racket clipped to a bracket on the front fork of her bicycle.

During the Games in London in 1908, sporting modernity mixed with politics of ethnicity, gender, colonialism and imperialism, as I see it, during the “Anthropological Games”. We do not find any sources on this in the book.  Among these special participants were Zulus and Pygmies from Africa, Siouxs from USA, and some were described simply as cannibals (Goksøyr, 1990; Hawthorn, 2004).  These participants stopped just before the finishing line of the 100m sprint and they lacked throwing techniques, which served to show that white people from Europe and the USA were more clever both bodily and intellectually; a legitimation for colonialism and the World Order of the time.

1,971 competitors took part in 1908, among them 45 female archery, figure skating, lawn tennis, motor-boat racing and yachting athletes, in addition to a women’s team for gymnastic demonstration.

Three women’s events were arranged in Stockholm 1912: tennis, swimming and diving, in addition to gymnastic events. Most female swimmers from Britain represented the working class. The 1912 swimming competition indicates a rather radical change in female racing costumes, especially how their bodies were mediated to a wider audience. Female Olympic costumes have from 1912 until today always been discussed in contrast to men’s.

The rivalry between Britain and the USA used to be bitter before World War I, in contrast to after the war, because they both sided together against Germany. This was a signal of the later West–East competition, especially after 1945.

29 nations travelled to Antwerp in 1924, representing 2.620 athletes, including 65 females. The robust menu of the British participants is well documented; what they had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner This was really healthy food in the interwar period.

During the Winter Olympic Games in Chamonix in 1924, the world noticed a new female figure skater, the Norwegian Sonja Henie. At the age of 11, she came last. However, her father, Wilhelm Hennie, the World Champion in track cycling in 1894, trained her nearly every day in order to make her a candidate to win a gold medal, which she actually did three times, in 1928, 1932 and 1936. Already when she achieved her first gold, she was a professional and not an amateur. Her professionalism was not debated in the Norwegian press. What was, however, mediated and criticized was the fact that she greeted Hitler on the ice and Hitler congratulated her after the victory in 1936. I have in mind a picture of a smiling Hitler holding the hand of a smiling young Sonja. She was so nervous before the competition because this was to be her last participation in the Olympic Games, before she would tour the world with her ice shows and before she would become a film star.

Those of us who are engaged in research about female sports, remember one specific event during the Olympic Games in Amsterdam in 1928: the 800 m run. Although the winner, Germany’s Linda Radke, set a new world record on 2 minutes and 16.3 seconds, and the silver and bronze winners also ran very well, the media focus was on some of the tired women after the finish, lying down exhausted. Both in the British Daily Sketch and the Norwegian national paper Dagbladet, this event was an example of what was not made for women. It was so terrible to watch sweet, females lying on the ground with too little clothes on. The conclusion was that this was unfeminine and did not suit women. All the stereotypes about women not suited for sport were recreated. 800 m was not contested again until 1960, neither in the Olympic Games, nor in national competitions in Norway.

The London Olympic Games in 1948 hosted about 390 women and 3.714 male contestants. The small number of female competitors was a 10-fold increase on the female representation at the previous London Games in 1908.

The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games was in important event for the Nazi regime. Years before the Games, the German Olympic Association sent out training instructions for most of the events to the sports people in Germany. Hitler opened the Games with a message of peace and friendship, although Jews and black people were not welcome. In this way he seemed to fool at lot of people, nearly the same way as he fooled the British conservative Prime Minister Chamberlain with the Munich Agreement in September 1938 by invading parts of Czechoslovakia. However, Chamberlain declared war when the Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.  We still remember how the African American athlete Jesse Owens would go on to outrage Hitler by winning four gold medals in track and field.

The London Olympic Games in 1948 hosted about 390 women and 3.714 male contestants. The small number of female competitors was a 10-fold increase on the female representation at the previous London Games in 1908. In 1948, London was short of accommodation, building materials, food, fuel and transport. Williams points out that in spite of austerity, or perhaps because of strained financial circumstances, the Games were sufficiently sponsored and went well.

According to the author, the 1948 Games was last of the “pre-war” Games (the 1940 and 1944 Games were cancelled) before the ‘Cold War’ rivalry from the 1952 Games in Helsinki. King George VI acted as patron in 1948 and princesses Elisabeth and Margaret were frequently featured in the Royal Box at Wembley. The 100m was the largest single female track and field event with 38 entries from 21 countries. Fanny Blankers-Koen won the 100m in 11.9 seconds before Britain’s Dorothy Manley. Blankers-Koen also won the 200m, on 24.4 seconds.

Those of us who are especially interested in track and field will perhaps never forget the long-legged sprinter Wilma Rudolph in the games in Rome in 1960. She won gold in 100m, 200m and the 4x100m relay for the USA. When she was five years old she contracted polio as so many children at that time. Her family was poor, and her mother brought her to a specialist in order for her to be able to walk as a normal person. The bus to and from her training lasted about two hours. These circumstances added to her star quality, and she became a role model for black women all over the world. I remember her well, because we competed in the 100m at White City Stadion in London in 1960 after the Games. Needless to say, her run on the line beside me felt like a wind flying further and further ahead of me.

Britain’s Mary Rand set a new world record in long jump during the 1964 Olympic Games. She is the only Brit who has won three medals in a single Olympic Games. I remember her because we competed against each other in the 100m in London in 1964. She as a star and still so friendly towards me, who was not known outside the Scandinavian countries.

More and more women took part in the Olympic Games along with better equal rights in sports as well as in general. Women made up 34% of competitors for the 1996 Games. By London 2012, they made up almost 45% of all participants.

I can warmly recommend this book to all sporting people and researchers for the author’s new histories of female heroes and anti-heroes, based on her extensive sources and creative writing.

Copyright © Gerd von der Lippe 2023