EILEEN BATTERSBYponders Fanny Blankers-Koen and Florence Griffith-Joyner
NEXT FRIDAY’S OPENING ceremony marks the beginning of the 30th Olympiad of the modern era. London is the first city to have hosted the games twice previously: first in 1908, and again in 1948. One athlete dominated those post-war London games; Dutchwoman Fanny Blankers-Koen (1918-2004) who won four gold medals, emulating her hero, Jesse Owens whose feats had so outraged Hitler in 1936 at the Berlin Olympics. Blankers-Koen had also been there, aged 18, placing 5th in the 4 x 100 metres and sixth in the high jump. By 1948, at 30 and a mother of two, having set world records during the war years in several events including the 100 yards, 100 metres, 220 yards, 80 metres hurdles, high jump, long jump and pentathlon, she was considered too old to go to London and that she should stay at home with her children. But Blankers-Koen did go; winning the 80 metres hurdles, 100 metres, 200 metres and taking the baton in fourth position in the 4 x 100 metres relay, stormed home to take the gold.
Owens and Carl Lewis in 1984 are the only other athletes to win four Olympic titles at one games. She won an even more important victory for women’s sport. “The Flying Housewife” remains one of the most enduring of champions, a reminder of a time before drugs and commercialism. In 1999 she was voted Female Athlete of the Century.
Wilma Rudolph (1940-1994) also captured the imagination. The 20th of 22 children born to a poor Tennessee couple, polio caused her to wear a leg brace until she was 11. She won a sprint relay bronze medal at the Melbourne Olympics. Four years later in Rome 1960, she won the 100 metres and 200 metres and anchored the victorious US 4 x 100 metres relay team. She not only won for black athletes, she raised the profile of women’s sport in the US. In the Tokyo Olympics her Tennessee Tigerbelle teammate Wyomia Tyus won the 100 metres and at Mexico in 1968, became the first sprinter, male or female, to retain an Olympic 100 metes title.
Poland’s Irena Szewinska won silver medals in the 200 metres and long jump in Tokyo and won the 200 metres in Mexico while finishing third in the 100 metres. In 1976 at Montreal, she won the 400 metres in a world record of 49.28. A study in dignity, Szewinska’s reign ended with the emergence of the formidable East German team which included Marita Koch who became the first woman to run under 22 seconds for 200 metres. Koch equalled her own 1979 200 metres world record of 21.71, 28 years ago today and with less following wind. Her 400 metres world record of 47.60 set in 1985 still stands as does evidence of steroids.
Koch’s 200 metres record fell to Florence Griffith-Joyner at the Seoul Olympics in 1988 as the garishly glamorous African American competed the sprint double in 21.34, which still stands as does her 100 metres record of 10.49. She died in her sleep, apparently of epilepsy in 1998, aged 38.