Women had not always been welcome in the Olympics. Quite the contrary.
The story starts more than 120 years ago when Charles Pierre Fredy, Baron de Coubertin proposed to reinstate the Olympic Games (without really understanding what the ancient Olympics were about). Some other times I will tell the story of the olympic revival, but for the time being it suffices to say that, thanks to Greece, the modern Olympics saw the light of the day.
For de Coubertin the situation was clear: women had no place in the Olympics. Their role should be limited to "crowning the champions, as in the tournaments of olden". He had not planned for the admission of women, did not want women to be admitted, and fought against their admission for more than thirty years. He was opposed to it from the inception of the Games to his dying day. For him the Games were “the solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism, with internationalism as a base, loyalty as a means, art for its setting, and female applause as reward”. The inclusion of women in the Games would be "impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic, and incorrect".
At the first modern Olympic Games in Athens 1896, no women competed. I ran across some mention of planned female participation in sailing during the 1896 Olympics, but there has been no sailing competition in Athens (it was cancelled due to weather conditions and lack of time). As a matter of fact I think that this is not even an urban myth but simply an erroneous writing which is being re-reported from time to time. (It is probably due to a confusion with the 1900 Games where there was indeed one female participant in the yachting competition).
Even though women were excluded from the 1896 Olympic Games, a woman did run, unofficially, the marathon. Of course, no women were allowed to participate alongside the men, but a woman did run the marathon course the day after the men's race. In a future post of mine I will tell the story of the first female marathoner (who, as chance would have it, is greek).
After Athens, the Games took place in Paris. In fact those were the Games de Coubertin had been wishing for all along. But he was caught off guard by the enthusiasm of the Greek and had to acquiesce and let them organise the first Games. The Paris 1900 Olympics were a joke. There was nothing "olympic" about them. The year was that of the Exposition Universelle and the competitions were organised as part of this huge event. Neither de Coubertin nor the Comité d'Organisation des Jeux Olympiques had any saying concerning the content of the sports events. In fact the IOC had to decide, much later, which of the events held in Paris were "olympic" and which not. So, nobody asked de Coubertin what was his opinion about the participation on women in the 1900 Games. As a conclusion 22 women (out of 997 participants) did take part. Of course their participation was limited to so-called feminine sports, the former leisure activities of the aristocracy: sailing, croquet (!) tennis, and golf (but only in the last two figured individual women's events). Margaret Abbott won the women's golf tournament but to the day of her death she was ignoring that she had won an olympic title.
Four years later in Saint Louis there was again a World Fair, and again the Olympic Games organising committee was largely ignored. So, there were again women participating in the Games ... but in a sole event, archery. A funny remark is in order here. Boxing was present in St. Louis as a demonstration sport, and it included also female boxers. It goes without saying that when boxing was admitted in the Olympics only the men's discipline did make it, since women's boxing was deemed to be a 'health risk'.
The inclusion of women in the Olympics was a source of sadness for de Coubertin. Fortunately for him, just before his demise he obtained a great satisfaction with the Olympic Games in Berlin. While many people were demanding a boycott, de Coubertin was a fervent supporter of the nazi regime, singing praises to the Führer. For him the Nazi Olympics were "illuminated with Hitler's strength and discipline and should serve as a model for the subsequent Games". Hitler returned the favour by proposing de Coubertin for the Nobel Peace Prize. (de Coubertin did not get it: the committee preferred an anti-nazi german journalist).
After two Olympics with feminine presence it was too late for de Coubertin to back out. Oh, he did try. He argued that "women engaging in strenuous sports were destroying their feminine charm". His reaction to the first match of women's fencing was that "such competitions would lead to the feminisation and the downfall of this noble discipline". When the swedish organising committee decided to include women's aquatics in the 1912 Games he argued that "women's performance would prove totally ineffective and not worth the effort to include them". And since there was at the time a movement to initiate a female Olympiad he pointed out that (to his opinion) such a manifestation "would arouse no public interest".
As stressed by historian S. Mitchell, if de Coubertin's authority was manifested at all levels, women would never have competed in the Olympic Games. But since (at least at the beginning) the responsibility and freedom to decide a program fell on the organising committee, women's competitions were permitted to develop against de Coubertin's expressed will.
And thus women started, in dribs and drabs, entering the Games. The road ahead was long and the resistance they would meet enormous. But this is a story we shall tell in a future post.
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