![]() Sweaty exertions were too masculine, could prevent women from becoming mothers or might even cause the uterus to fall out. She received letters, she told me, saying that she was too old and “that it was not good to be running if you had a baby, that you should do the housekeeping rather than running in shorts in a stadium.”Įven after women’s track and field was introduced at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics, cultural dismissiveness and pseudoscience persisted for decades. But Blankers-Koen persisted, consulting her doctor, who told her, “You are breastfeeding, but try it.”ĭespite her unmatched accomplishments, many questioned Blankers-Koen’s presence in London. For many women of that era, one child, much less two, would have meant the end of their athletic careers. “People were being taken away, and friends of mine in the underground were shot, and people were hungry and were in the streets begging for food,” she told The Times in 1982.Īt war’s end, Blankers-Koen had a daughter, also named Fanny. They had a son, Jan Jr., and, when food became scarce, they survived on potatoes and watery milk from an uncle who had a farm. Koen trained intermittently but still set a handful of world records and married her coach, Jan Blankers, who had competed in the triple jump at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics. Although the country was occupied, some domestic sports competitions continued. In May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands. “I thought it must be nice to have just one medal,” she said at the time.Įventually, she would match Owens’s haul of four gold medals, but not before an interruption of more than a decade. They represented a renewal of the world’s biggest sporting event following the wartime cancellation of the Winter and Summer Games of 19 - a disruption deadlier and longer than a yearlong postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Austerity Olympics, they were nicknamed. Canada felled two Douglas firs to make diving boards. Switzerland donated gymnastics equipment. Finland provided timber for the basketball court. When the Dutch track star Fanny Blankers-Koen appeared at the 1948 London Olympics, soon to become the first woman to win four gold medals at a single Games, she was not the only welcomed and urgent arrival from the Netherlands.Ī hundred tons of fruit and vegetables were also sent from the Low Countries to help feed Dutch and other athletes in a still-battered city during the first Summer Olympics held after World War II. ![]() Four events, four gold medals.The latest article from “ Beyond the World War II We Know ,” a series from The Times that documents lesser-known stories from the war, recounts the Austerity Olympics, the first Games to take place in 12 years and the track-and-field star who changed the perception of women’s athletics. She ran the anchor leg, took the baton in fourth place and produced an astonishing piece of sprinting to move up to third, then second before taking the lead. Her team-mates were already warming up, but it did not put her off. Blankers-Koen celebrated those victories with a shopping spree, and only arrived back at Wembley Stadium ten minutes before the start of the 4x100m relay. The hurdles gold came next, followed by victory in the 200m, which she won by 0.7secs – a huge margin that has not been matched since. Her husband, Jan Blankers, who was also her coach, persuaded her otherwise. She won the 100m with ease, and, with an Olympic gold medal to her name, nearly withdrew from her other events to return home. The 100m dash, the 80m hurdles, the 200m and the 4x100m relay. The events she selected were among the most fiercely-contested. She arrived in London as the World record holder in no fewer than six different events. Blankers-Koen won four gold medals in the London Games and could have won even more had she not been restricted to entering three individual races as well as the sprint relay.
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