FANNY BLANKERS-KOEN
Winning her first Olympics medals at the age of 30 as a mother of two, the Dutchwoman not only broke barriers of age and gender at a time when women were supposed to stay at home and rear kids but also ushered in a new era in modern sports, one that discounted extraneous factors like marriage and motherhood being the end of the road for a professional athlete.
Fanny Blankers-Koen....the mother who defied all odds. Photo: The Hindu Archives But it were the challenges off track that made her truly special. Starting with swimming, she switched to track but the 800m was not in Olympics. In the absence of international action during World War II that meant not just lack of sporting avenues but also meagre resources to survive, she set six world records in domestic competitions.
At the 1946 European Championships, she won the 80m hurdles and anchored the 4x100m relay team to gold, six months after the birth of her second child.
There were snide remarks from journalists and public alike who felt she was ‘too old’. “I got very many bad letters, people writing that I must stay home with my children and that I should not be allowed to run on a track with short trousers,” she said in a 1982 interview.
1948 London changed it all as she emulated her hero Jesse Owens, who had won four golds in Berlin 12 years earlier, Fanny’s first Olympics as an 18-year-old. She participated in her third and last edition in 1952 and became coach of the Dutch team.
The annual Fanny Blankers-Koen Games were established in 1981 and in 1999 she was voted as IAAF’s Female Athlete of the Century.
NADIA COMANECI
Nadia Comaneci is the epitome of legends. The Romanian with nine Olympic medals, five of them gold, is synonymous with gymnastics and perfection.
The ‘Perfect 10’ girl has done a lot more since July 18, 1976, when she first registered the score on the uneven bars.
Nadia Comaneci.... Miss Perfect 10.. Photo: The Hindu Archives American sports writer Frank DeFord later wrote, “Had she scored a 9.99, nothing would have changed, but the ‘Perfect 10’ changed everything. Nobody had the foggiest idea who she was or where she had come from, but she became the icon of the Games.”
Nadia was first spotted by Romanian gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi and was trained by him and his wife Marta. Her first competition wasn’t great but as a nine-year-old, she set her first record becoming the youngest junior national champion. Five years later Nadia became a legend. In later years, she won three consecutive European all-round titles — a record that remains — and four World Championship medals.
The changed IOC rules mean the minimum age for a gymnast at Olympics has to be 16 years, which means legally her youngest champion record can never be broken.
WILMA RUDOLPH
Sometimes, it’s the sheer scale of personal battles fought and won that turn an athlete into legend. Wilma Glodean Rudolph not only successfully overcame physical disability to become an Olympic champion but also fought through social and family struggles in her pursuit of sporting excellence.
A black American woman, born prematurely to poor parents in a still-segregated town of Tennessee in 1940 and being one of 22 children, was never expected to have it easy. That she was afflicted with polio in her left leg at the age of four only made things worse. From there to becoming the fastest woman on earth at the 1960 Olympics takes something special.
Wilma Rudolph…triumphing over adversity. Photo: The Hindu Archives With braces for five years and special orthopaedic shoes for the next two, Wilma had been running for only five years unaided when she first stepped on the podium at the 1956 Games, winning bronze in the 4x100m. That medal made her more determined to better herself.
“When I got it (the bronze medal) back there were handprints all over it. I took it and started shining it up. I discovered that bronze doesn’t shine. So I decided I’m going to try this one more time. I’m going to go for the gold,” she is quoted as saying in an interview.
She did that four years later, winning two of her gold with record timings and the 100m in 11 seconds flat, a third record if it hadn’t been wind-aided. But she had already equalled the existing record (11.3) in the semifinals.
Two years later she retired, at just 22 years.
She succumbed to brain cancer at the age of 54.
