page_title: Fanny Blankers-Koen
section_title: Awards and tributes
hierarchical_section_title: Fanny Blankers-Koen / Awards and tributes
caption_attribution_description: English: Statue of Fanny Blankers-Koen (Hengelo) Nederlands: Standbeeld van Fanny Blankers-Koen (Hengelo)
context_page_description: Francina "Fanny" Elsje Blankers-Koen was a Dutch track and field athlete, best known for winning four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She competed there as a 30-year-old mother of two, earning her the nickname "the flying housewife", and was the most successful athlete at the event.
  Having started competing in athletics in 1935, she took part in the 1936 Summer Olympics a year later. Although international competition was stopped by World War II, Blankers-Koen set several world records during that period, in events as diverse as the long jump, the high jump, and sprint and hurdling events.
  Apart from her four Olympic titles, she won five European titles and 58 Dutch championships, and set or tied 12 world records – the last, pentathlon, in 1951 aged 33. She retired from athletics in 1955, after which she became captain of the Dutch female track and field team. In 1999, she was voted "Female Athlete of the Century" by the International Association of Athletics Federations. Her Olympic victories are credited with helping to eliminate the belief that age and motherhood were barriers to success in women's sport.
context_section_description: Dutch Athlete of the Year: 1937, 1940, 1943
  Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year: 1948
  Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau: 1949
  Medal of the NOC*NSP: 1949
  Royal Dutch Athletics Federation honorary member: 1949
  IAAF Female Athlete of the 20th Century: 1999
  IAAF Hall of Fame: 2012
  She was among the women included in the 1001 Vrouwen uit de Nederlandse geschiedenis, a dictionary of biography covering 1001 important Dutchwomen. In a 2004 national poll, Blankers-Koen ranked 29th for De Grootste Nederlander (The Greatest Netherlander); she was the third highest sportsperson (after footballers Johan Cruyff and Marco van Basten) and the seventh highest woman in the poll.
  Two public statues of her have been erected in the Netherlands: the first was made by Han Rehm and placed in Rotterdam in 1954 and the second, made by Antoinette Ruiter, was placed on 9 May 2007 in Hengelo. Also in 2007, a plaque was placed in the sportspark at Olympiaplein in Amsterdam declaring "Hier trainde Fanny Blankers-Koen" ("Fanny Blankers-Koen trained here"). Several locations have been named in her honour, including a fire station in Amsterdam (Fanny Blankers-Koenkazerne), a park in Almere (FBK-sportpark), and a sports hall in Hoofddorp where she lived (Fanny Blankers-Koen hal).
  Blankers-Koen was honored with a Google Doodle on 26 April 2018, on what would have been her 100th birthday.
caption: A statue of Blankers-Koen in Hengelo
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