Fanny Blankers-Koen | Dutch athlete | Britannica.com Fanny Blankers-Koen Alternative Titles: Francina Elsje Koen, the Flying Housewife Fanny Blankers-Koen Shirley Strickland de la Hunty Fanny Blankers-Koen, née Francina Elsje Koen (born April 26, 1918, Baarn, Neth.—died Jan. 25, 2004, Amsterdam ), versatile Dutch track-and-field athlete, who was the first woman to win four gold medals at a single Olympics. She set world records in seven events. Blankers-Koen first achieved success as a teenager, winning a Dutch national championship in the 800-metre run in 1935; the next year, at age 17, she placed sixth in the high jump and competed in the 4 × 100-metre relay at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin . Her time of 11.0 sec in the 100-yard dash in Amsterdam in 1938 tied a world record. She married her coach, Jan Blankers, in 1940.

In 1942 and 1943 she set world records in the 80-metre hurdles (11.0 sec), high jump (1.71 metres [5.61 feet]), and long jump (6.25 metres [20.51 feet]). Prior to the 1948 Olympics in London , some experts thought Blankers-Koen was too old to be an Olympic sprint champion, and others denounced her for not attending to her duties as a wife and mother of two. Olympic rules limited Blankers-Koen to participating in only three individual events at the 1948 Games. Despite her jumping records, she preferred track events and made them her focus. She won the 100-metre sprint by a comfortable margin, but in the 80-metre hurdles she had to overcome both a slow start and a bumped hurdle in order to secure a narrow victory. Despite winning gold in her first two events, an emotionally spent Blankers-Koen was not confident going into the 200-metre event. Feeling both pressured to win and reviled for even participating, she burst into tears and told her husband that she wanted to withdraw.

She reconsidered, however, and went on to win the final by a decisive margin, despite muddy conditions. In her last event, the 4 × 100 relay, she received the baton in fourth place and caught the lead runner at the finish line. Nicknamed the “Flying Housewife” by the press, Blankers-Koen received a hero’s welcome when she returned to the Netherlands. In 1951, after the pentathlon had been modified to consist of the shot put , high jump, 200-metre sprint, 80-metre hurdles, and long jump, Blankers-Koen set the first modern pentathlon record, with 4,692 points. She failed to earn a medal in her final Olympic appearance in Helsinki , Finland, in 1952. In 1999 she was named the top female athlete of the 20th century by the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF; later called the International Association of Athletics Federations ).

Learn More in these related articles: Fanny Blankers-Koen Facts LINK / CITE ADD TO WORD LIST Fanny Blankers-Koen Facts Fanny Blankers-Koen (born 1918) was known as the "first queen of women's Olympics." She remains the first and only woman ever to win four gold medals at a single Olympics. When Blankers-Koen began her sports career, Norman Giller noted in The 1984 Olympic Handbook, "women's athletics had been something of a sideshow… . She, more than anybody, made women athletes worthy of respect and attention, with a series of stunning performances in the London Olympics." Fanny Blankers-Koen was born Francina Elsje Koen, the daughter of a government inspector in the Dutch city of Amsterdam in 1918. Her talent in sports was evident from a very young age. Blankers-Koen came from an athletic family that encouraged her to swim, skate, and play tennis. When she was six, she joined a local sports club, where she became known as an excellent runner and swimmer. When Blankers-Koen was 14, her father encouraged her to specialize in track and field.

In 1935, when she was 17, she told everyone, "I've made up my mind to go for sport." Blankers-Koen became a member of the Amsterdam Dames' Athletic Club, and rode her bicycle 18 miles each way from her home in Hoofdorp to the gymnasium. She did not have an outdoor track to train on, so she ran indoors, in the gymnasium hallway. Blankers-Koen's first competition was in 1935, in a 200-meter race in Groningen. She did not place well at that meet, but within a month she beat the Dutch national champion in the 800-meters. At that meet, she met Jan Blankers, a talented track coach and former triple-jumper who had won an AAA scholarship in Britain. He was the track coach for the Dutch Olympic team, and he invited her to join the team. Strangely, although she was so talented in the 800-meters, this race, like other longer distances, was considered "too difficult" for women and was barred from the Olympic competition.

Blankers-Koen made her Olympic debut at age the age of 18 in Berlin, where she finished in a tie for sixth in the high jump and fifth in the 100 meter relay. For her, a highlight of the competition was meeting American athlete, Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in Berlin. In 1940 she married the Olympic track coach, Jan Blankers, and they had a son, Jan, the following year. Blankers-Koen continued to train, even through the oppressive Nazi occupation of Holland. Because of World War II, the Olympics were canceled in 1940 and 1944, and she was unable to enter international competitions. Nevertheless, she set world records in the high jump and the long jump at Dutch meets. When Blankers-Koen gave birth to her daughter Fanneke, in 1945, she had been out of training for a while. Nevertheless, seven months later she ran in the European championships, where she won the 80-meter hurdles, ran the anchor leg for the Dutch women's team's victory in the 4 (100-meter relay, and came in fourth in the high jump.

Just before the 1948 Olympics, she set a world record in the 100-meters, with a time of 11.5 seconds. By the time the 1948 Olympic Games convened in London, Blankers-Koen was the world record holder in the 100 meter race, the hurdles, the high jump, and the long jump. She was also 30 years old and the mother of two children. People said that her age and motherhood would slow her down, and that she should be home taking care of her children instead of out running on the track. That kind of talk, she said, "was just the thing to rouse me," according to Len Johnson in theage.com, "to make me go out there and prove to them that, even if I was 30 years old and the mother of two children, I could still be a champion." She had been waiting 12 years to compete in the Olympics again, and she wasn't about to miss her chance. While Blankers-Koen was training for the Games, she wheeled a baby carriage to the Amsterdam stadium and parked it near the track, so she could watch her baby while she ran.

No one has collected statistics on how having children affects a woman's performance in sports and how many mothers have competed in the Olympics, but it is generally believed that Fanny Blankers-Koen is the only woman in Olympic track history to have won a gold medal after having more than one child, and the only woman with more than one child even to have been on an Olympic track-and-field team. London Olympics, 1948 Like Babe Didrickson Zaharias, another famous female athlete, Blankers-Koen was skilled in more events than the official Olympic rules allowed an athlete to compete in, with world records in the 100-yard dash, the 80-meter hurdles, the long jump, the high jump, and two relay events. Official rules limited her to competing in three individual events, and she chose to run in the 100-meters, 200-meters, 80-meter hurdles, and to be a team member for the 4 (100-meter relay.

Modestly, according to Bert Rosenthal in Nando.net, she said many years later at a Metropolitan Track Writers' lunch, "I didn't expect I would [win a gold] because there were other very good [competitors]. I said I hope to come in the finals." She did much more than that. In all, Blankers-Koen competed 12 times in nine days—running heats to get into the final races, as well as the final races—and won every time. She won the 100 meters by three yards over Britain's Dorothy Manley on a wet track in 11.9 seconds. Afterward, she wanted to celebrate. According to Rosenthal, after the event her husband found her sitting on a sidewalk with other women competitors. "I said to him I would like to have a party," she said later. "He said, 'Oh no, you are going to bed. Tomorrow you have the hurdles.' I said 'I already have an Olympic gold medal."' Her husband won, and she went to bed. The next day, she had a bad start in the 80-meter hurdles and caught up with the leader, 19-year-old Maureen Gardner of Great Britain, halfway through the race.

Just as Blankers-Koen was about the take the lead, she hit a hurdle and staggered, as she said, "like a drunkard." The finish was so close that she didn't know whether or not she had won, and when the Olympic band began playing "God Save the King" she believed Gardner had won. But the band was only playing because King George VI had entered the stadium, and immediately afterward they played the Dutch national anthem to honor her gold medal win. She and Gardner had both run the race in the world record time of 11.2 seconds, but she had been declared the winner. The tension of that race got to her, and just before she was scheduled to run the semifinal in the 200 meters, she was crying in the locker room, ready to drop out. She was exhausted and felt the pressure to win. She disliked the 200-meter race, an event that was being run by women for the first time in the Olympics, and she also missed her children. "I was having such a bad time," she said later. "I wanted to go back home to my children." Her husband told her, "If you don't want to run, it's all right.

But I'm afraid you'll be sorry afterward." Blankers-Koen realized that all her life, all she had ever wanted to do was be the best. She decided to run. Blankers-Koen won the semifinal in the Olympic record time of 24.3 seconds. Then, on another wet track, she won the final by 7 yards, in 24.4 seconds. She won her fourth gold medal in five days of running in the anchor leg of the 4 (100 relay for the Dutch team. When Blankers-Koen took the baton, her team was in third place, but she made up the huge deficit and caught Australia's Joyce King, who was in the lead, in the last two strides of the race. Although Blankers-Koen was the world record holder in the high jump and long jump, she didn't compete in these events.

"I didn't like the high jump," she said, "and the long jump almost coincided with a hurdles heat, and I preferred one gold medal to two silvers." If she had competed in the high jump and long jump, however, she would probably have won two more gold medals, since the winners in these events all won with distances that were far short of the world records—which had been set by Blankers-Koen. After Her Olympic Wins After her Olympic victories, people compared her to African-American athlete, Jesse Owens, who had stunned the Nazis by winning gold medals in four track events in the 1936 Berlin Games. When she returned to Amsterdam, her country treated her to a huge parade. Blankers-Koen, who rode next to her husband in an open coach pulled by four white horses, was amazed by all the excitement, and kept saying, "All I did was win some foot races." Blankers-Koen became known as the "Flying Dutch Housewife" because people considered it unusual that a married woman and mother was a world-class athlete.

"After her great success," wrote Janet Woolum in Outstanding Women Athletes: Who They Are and How They Influenced Sports in America, "the media played up her role as wife and mother, sometimes overshadowing her athletic achievements. However, the image they created of her as housewife/mother/athlete helped to dispel the myth that women would lose their femininity while competing in world class track and field races." Running in the 1950 European championships, Blankers-Koen again won the 100-meters, 200-meters, and 80-meter hurdles, and won a second as a member of the Dutch relay team. When she was 34, Blankers-Koen wanted to compete in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. Although she started the 80-meter hurdles, she was not able to qualify for the finals. She withdrew from the Games because of a boil on her leg that led to blood poisoning and severe illness. In 1955, she officially retired from competition at the age of 37. She coached others and was the manager of the Dutch team at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.

During her almost-twenty-year career in sports, Blankers-Koen set 20 world records in seven events ranging from sprints to hurdles, long jump, high jump, and the pentathlon. No woman in the history of track has ever won as many national medals. In 1948, she was chosen as the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. In 1980, Blankers-Koen was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. In 1998, she was invited to New York to receive the Jesse Owens Award. Now in her eighties, Blankers-Koen still enjoys good health and athletic vigor. She plays tennis almost every day. Further Reading on Fanny Blankers-Koen For the Record: Women in Sports, edited by Robert Markell, World Almanac Publications, 1985. Giller, Norman, The 1984 Olympic Handbook, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983. The Women's Sports Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Markell, Henry Holt and Co., 1997.

Woolum, Janet Outstanding Women Athletes: Who They Are and How They Influenced Sports in America, Oryx Press, 1992. "Fanny Blankers-Koen," IAAF Legends, (November 9, 1999). "Fifty Years Ago, Blankers-Koen Was Pure Gold," Nando.net, http;// …the/mor/feat/archive/022398/mor25435.html (November 9, 1999). "From Runner's World," Running After Childbirth, ~csc/runmom.html (November 9, 1999). "Grace Under Pressure—Four Times Over," Olympic Daily Flashback, (November 9, 1999). "Pacesetters: A Century of the Best," , .au/daily/980727/sport/sport9.html (November 9, 1999).

50 stunning Olympic moments No10: Fanny Blankers-Koen wins four golds | Sport | The Guardian 50 stunning Olympic moments 50 stunning Olympic moments No10: Fanny Blankers-Koen wins four golds The Dutchwoman demolished prejudices about gender, age and motherhood and, as a pioneer who inspired millions at the 1948 London Games, established the legitimacy of women's sport Wednesday 18 January 2012 05.00 EST First published on Wednesday 18 January 2012 05.00 EST Share on Messenger Close Moments after King George VI had declared the Games of the XIV Olympiad open and the former Cambridge University 400m runner John Mark had lit the Olympic flame in Wembley Stadium, the Archbishop of York, Cyril Garbett, stood to make his dedicatory address.

Why Olympians shine under the spotlight Read more “When the Games are over,” he said, “those who have taken part in them should return to their homes as torch bearers, not indeed bearing the visible light just carried into the arena but with the flame of goodwill burning in their hearts and continuing to burn there long after the Olympic flame has been extinguished.” Fanny Blankers-Koen, named the women athlete of the 20th century by the International Association of Athletics Federations in 1999 at a gala in Monte Carlo, was not there to hear his words. Her husband and coach, Jan Blankers, had refused her permission to walk with the Netherlands team in the opening parade, deeming it “too tiring”. But the Dutchwoman, who went on to emulate Jesse Owens’s four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics 12 years earlier, embodied the archbishop’s aspirations more than anyone else, demolishing prejudices about gender, age and motherhood and, as a pioneer and standard-bearer who inspired millions, establishing the legitimacy of women’s sport in an Olympic movement that had been the preserve of male competitors until 1928.

The woman lauded for her feats on Wembley’s damp and unresponsive cinder track as “the Flying Housewife” and, more cleverly, “the flying Dutchmam”, was 30 and the mother of a six-year-old son, Jantje, and three-year-old daughter, Fanneke. Born in Baarn in the province of Utrecht, Blankers-Koen’s father, Arnold Koen, a farmer who competed in the shot and discus, encouraged his daughter to take up athletics. Impressed by her effervescence – she used to run at full pelt on errands, vaulting the garden gate – Arnold took her along with him to local meetings where she quickly began to win multiple events. She also showed immense promise at swimming and skating but concentrated on athletics after joining the Amsterdam Dames’ Athletic Club in 1935 at the age of 16, cycling the 18 miles there and back from her home in Hoofddorp. A year later she set a national record for the 800m, an event that would have precluded her from Olympic glory.

At the Amsterdam Games in 1928 Lina Radke won the 800m in world-record time but six of the nine runners in the final had collapsed with exhaustion in extreme humidity and the event was banned until 1960. Blankers-Koen’s versatility saved her from international obscurity and her aptitude for sprinting and jumping earned her a place in the Dutch team for the 1936 Olympics where she finished sixth in the high jump and fifth as a member of the 4x100m relay team. In Berlin she met Owens, his autograph becoming her most treasured possession. “When I met him again at the Munich Olympics in 1972,” she recalled, “I said I still have your autograph, I’m Fanny Blankers-Koen. He said: ‘You don’t have to tell me who you are, I know everything about you.’ Isn’t that incredible? Jesse Owens knew who I was.” In 1938 she set her first world record, 11sec dead for the 100 yards, and won bronze medals in the 100m and 200m at the European Championships held in Vienna.

The Dutch press predicted that the 1940 Olympics, scheduled to be held in Helsinki, would be her stage to shine. However, international sport was suspended on the outbreak of war in 1939 and Blankers-Koen spent the next six years at home near Amsterdam which was occupied following the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940 and not liberated until the Nazis officially surrendered in May 1945. In 1940 she had married her coach, Jan Blankers, twice a former national triple-jump champion who was 14 years her senior. Domestic sport continued under occupation and Blankers-Koen set six world records – in the high jump, long jump, 80m hurdles, 100 yard dash, 4x110 yard relay and 4x200m relay – from 1942-44. All were achieved after the birth of her son and in the face of criticism that she was acting selfishly by not retiring to devote herself solely to motherhood.

The family survived the Hongerwinter of 1944-45, when the German blockade cut off supplies of food to the Nazi-occupied regions of the Netherlands and famine was widespread, and she gave birth to Fanneke in 1945, the year of liberation. She did not train during the latter stages of pregnancy but after seven months off she resumed her regime, absurdly light by modern standards, of twice weekly two-hour sessions, taking the children with her to the track in the basket of her bicycle. “What will happen to my milk supply if I train and race?” she asked her doctor. Her concerns were assuaged enough to attempt to carry on when he replied: “You won’t know until you try.” At the first post-war European Championships, held at the Bislett Stadium in Oslo in August 1946, Blankers-Koen won the 80m hurdles, anchored the 4x100m squad to gold and finished fourth in the high jump.

In 1948, at the age of 30, she ran a world-record equalling 11.5sec for the 100m but was subjected to intense criticism for stating her intention to travel to London for the Olympics. “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 – how do you say it? – short trousers,” she told the New York Times in 1982. “But I was a good mother. I had no time for much besides my house chores and training, and when I went shopping it was only to buy food for the family and never to buy dresses. “One newspaperman wrote that I was too old to run, that I should stay at home and take care of my children. When I got to London, I pointed my finger at him and I said: ‘I show you.’” Probability suggests she was referring to Jack Crump, who was not only the honorary secretary of the British Amateur Athletic Board and team manager of the Olympic athletics team but also a BBC commentator and Daily Telegraph athletics correspondent.

What is certain is that Crump’s famous pre-Games verdict, that Blankers-Koen was “too old to make the grade”, was as miscalculated and provocative a sporting prediction as the one Alan Hansen delivered on Manchester United’s title ambitions after one game of the 1995-96 Premier League season. A pre-Games stipulation that athletes could enter only a maximum of three individual events meant that Blankers-Koen was forced to forgo the high and long jumps in which she was the current world record holder. Germany and Japan were barred from participating at London 1948 and the Soviet Union declined an invitation to compete. Great Britain, mired in austerity to pay back the debts accrued during the second world war, was not even able as host to supply food for the visiting athletes who had to bring their own provisions to London. Based with four other teams at St Helen’s school in Norwood, Blankers-Koen took the train to Wembley for each of her events, completing her journey on foot. Her first event was the 100m and she won her heat and semi-final comfortably.

Clement Attlee, in his opening address as prime minister, had said: “May the weather be fine, the events well contested and may records be broken.” He was to be disappointed with the first of these ambitions, much of the athletics programme took part in wet and windy conditions. Blankers-Koen felt that the margins of victory she achieved to qualify for the final had been deceptive, thinking her fellow sprinters had been holding themselves back. But wearing the white shirt and orange shorts of the Dutch team, her knees pumping high and her head held back, she discovered that her pre-eminence had not been an illusion, storming to the tape three yards ahead of Great Britain’s Dorothy Manley. “If I won gold I had told my father he should dance around the table,” she said.

“On the radio I told him it was time to start dancing after I won the 100m.” That night back at her digs she told her husband: “I am an Olympic champion and I don’t want to run any more.” She said she had achieved her goal and that she was missing her children but Jan knew her better, an impression her daughter, who did not subscribe to the common perception of her mother in later years as a benevolent and modest person, recounted in Kees Kooman’s biography Een Koningen Met Mannenbenen – A Queen with Man’s Legs. “My mother never loved herself and, the other way round, she could not give love and friendship herself to other people,” she said. “My mother only enjoyed herself when she was being worshipped.” Blankers told her to go to bed and rest for the following day’s hurdles heats and she qualified with ease. The final, however, was her toughest race so far and Blankers-Koen said she had felt intimidated by the home favourite Maureen Gardner’s form in the preceding races. She started poorly. “Nobody could have felt less like a champion,” she said. “My knees trembled.

I hit the fifth hurdle, my style went to pieces and I staggered home like a drunkard.” The roars of the crowd as the Dutchwoman and Britain’s Gardner seemed to hit the tape, literally neck and neck, suggested to Blankers-Koen that her rival would get the decision but, as she told the Sunday Times’ David Walsh in 1999, she thought she had nicked it. “I just leaned forward enough to get in front of Maureen. I leaned so low, the tape cut my neck and the blood trickled on to my vest.” She was right, she had won and Jan embraced her. “See, you aren’t too old after all,” he said. Again she said she felt she had achieved enough and tried to withdraw from the 200m. Sobbing in the Wembley dressing rooms minutes before the start of her heat she told her husband she wanted to go home. “You can go home if you wish,” he said. “But in time you will be sorry.

Just go out there and try to make the final, that will be enough.” She stormed into the final and on 6 August, after a rain delay, slaughtered the field, beating Britain’s Audrey Williamson into silver by 0.7sec, still the largest margin of victory in an Olympics 200m final. That night she had the party she craved after winning the 100m, going to a party in the West End with journalists and savouring a glass of wine. The next morning she went shopping, spending so long choosing her ideal raincoat that by the time the crowded train delivered her to Wembley her team-mates in the relay squad had already begun warming up on the track. Ten to watch: meet Team GB's sporting superheroes Read more She was running the anchor leg and the efforts of Xenia Stad de Jong, Gerda van der Kade-Koudijs and Nettie Witziers-Timmer had put her in fourth place when she received the baton, a few yards behind Australia’s Joyce King. “I thought to myself I could never win this, never, never, never,” she said.

“Then with 50m to go I thought: ‘Maybe I have a chance.’ I ran faster than I have ever run, getting closer all the time, until a couple of metres from the line, I went into the lead.” Two days later she boarded a train at Liverpool Street for Harwich and the journey home to Amsterdam. In her luggage were the four gold medals, 64 years later still the greatest individual haul by a woman track and field athlete, at a single Olympic Games . She went home to receive Queen Juliana’s praise, a knighthood in the Order of Orange Nassau and a gift of a bicycle from the people of Amsterdam. But more than that she went home with the spoils of victory over sexism that kept the Archbishop of York’s beacon of hope burning for the women of the world. What the Guardian wrote 5 August 1948 The King and Queen entered the Royal Box here today a few moments too late to see one of the finest races so far in the London Olympic Games.

They missed seeing F Blankers-Koen (Holland) pressed so hotly to the last inch of the women’s 80 metres hurdles by both M Gardner (Great Britain) and SB Strickland (Australia) that though she won in a new world and Olympic record time of 11.2sec, Gardner was so close that they both returned the same time and Strickland was barely a yard away. Blankers-Koen is easily the outstanding all-round woman athlete of her day. Off the track she is as feminine as man’s capricious heart could wish. On it not only is she as expert technically as most men champions but her actual foot and leg movements are straight like a man’s rather than a woman’s and temperamentally she is a lesson to all. She is cheerful before going to her mark, is as steady as a rock on it and then starts as though she herself had been fired. In today’s final Gardner was at her best and much cooler than yesterday. She actually had the better of the start and led over the first hurdle. At the seventh flight, however, the Dutch woman was a yard ahead and Strickland was coming with a great rush.

Gardner was quicker away again on the run-in, gained on both and left many of the spectators in delicious half-belief in a British victory. History of the 1948 Olympic Games in London History of the 1948 Olympic Games in London History of the 1948 Olympic Games in London The Austerity Games Guardsmen marching round the perimeter of the track inside Wembley Stadium during the opening ceremony of the London Olympics. Original Publication: Picture Post - 4582 - The Pageant Of The Opening - pub. 1948 (Photo by Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Getty Images). (Photo by Haywood Magee/Picture Post/Getty Images) 20th Century History Expert By Jennifer Rosenberg Since the Olympic Games had not been held in either 1940 or 1944 because of World War II , there was much debate as to whether or not to hold the 1948 Olympic Games at all. Ultimately, the 1948 Olympic Games (also known as the XIV Olympiad) were held, with a few post-war modifications, from July 28 to August 14, 1948.

These "Austerity Games" turned out to be very popular and a great success. Fast Facts Official Who Opened the Games: British King George VI Person Who Lit the Olympic Flame: British runner John Mark Number of Athletes: 4,104 (390 women, 3,714 men) Number of Countries: 59 countries Number of Events: 136 Post-War Modifications When it was announced that the Olympic Games would be resumed, many debated whether it was wise to have a festival when many European countries were in ruins and the people near starvation. To limit the United Kingdom's responsibility to feed all the athletes, it was agreed that the participants would bring their own food. continue reading below our video 10 Best Universities in the United States Surplus food was donated to British hospitals. No new facilities were built for these Games, but the Wembley Stadium had survived the war and proved adequate. No Olympic Village was erected; the male athletes were housed at an army camp in Uxbridge and the women housed at Southlands College in dormitories. Missing Countries Germany and Japan, the aggressors of World War II, were not invited to participate. The Soviet Union, although invited, also did not attend.

Two New Items The 1948 Olympics saw the introduction of blocks, which are used to help start runners in sprint races. Also new was the very first, Olympic, indoor pool -- Empire Pool. Amazing Stories Badmouthed because of her older age (she was 30) and because she was a mother (of two young children), Dutch sprinter Fanny Blankers-Koen was determined to win a gold medal. She had participated in the 1936 Olympics, but the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics meant that she had to wait 12 more years to get another shot at winning. Blankers-Koen, often called "the Flying Housewife" or "the Flying Dutchmam," showed them all when she took home four gold medals, the first woman to do so.. On the other side of the age spectrum was 17-year-old Bob Mathias . When his high school coach had suggested he try out for the Olympics in the decathlon, Mathias didn't even know what that event was. Four months after starting training for it, Mathias won gold at the 1948 Olympics, becoming the youngest person to win a men's athletics event.

(As of 2015, Mathias still holds that title.) One Major Snafu There was one major snafu at the Games. Though the United States had won the 400-meter relay by a full 18 feet, a judge ruled that one of the U.S. team members had passed the baton outside of the passing zone. Thus, the U.S. team was disqualified. The medals were handed out, the national anthems were played. The United States officially protested the ruling and after careful review of the films and photographs taken of the baton pass, the judges decided that the pass had been completely legal; thus the United States team was the real winner. The British team had to give up their gold medals and received silver medals (which had been given up by the Italian team). The Italian team then received the bronze medals which had been given up by the Hungarian team.

Fanny Blankers-Koen, wife, mother, and four-time Olympic gold medalist - Amazing Women In History Amazing Women In History Fanny Blankers-Koen, wife, mother, and four-time Olympic gold medalist August 16, 2012 3 66 Fanny Blankers-Koen (1918–2004) was a Dutch Olympic athlete known as the Flying Housewife. In the 1948 Olympics in London, the 30-year-old mother of two won four gold medals and set world records — while pregnant with her third child. She was the first woman to win four Olympic gold medals, and the first one to do so in a single Olympics. Born Francina Elsje Koen, Fanny first competed in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin at 18 years old, where she didn’t win but was able to get the autograph of her hero, track and field athlete Jesse Owens.

Many years later, she met him again: When I met him again in Munich at the 1972 Olympics I said, “I still have your autograph, I’m Fanny Blankers-Koen.” He said, “You don’t have to tell me who you are, I know everything about you.” Isn’t that incredible? Jesse Owens knew who I was. Though Fanny went on to train, setting her first world record and winning international medals, she was unable to compete in the Olympics again for many years: World War II put a stop to the 1940 and 1944 Olympics. By the time of the first post-war Olympics in 1948 in London, Fanny was 30 years old, and married with a 7-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter. When she had had her first child, many assumed it was the end of her athletic career. At the time, top female athetes who were married were extremely rare, and it was inconceivable that a mother would be an athlete.

“I got very many bad letters, people writing that I must stay home with my children.” “One newspaperman wrote that I was too old to run, that I should stay at home and take care of my children. When I got to London, I pointed my finger at him and I said: ‘I show you.’“ People also said that at 30 years old, she was too old to be competing. The British athletic team’s manager claimed she was “too old to make the grade”, and many journalists questioned her on her age. Still, as the leading athlete in the Netherlands, Fanny qualified for the Olympics. She chose four events: the 100 meter, the 200 meter, and 80 meter hurdles, and the 4 x 100 meter relay. In the 100 meter, she easily sped to the finish line past her opponents, winning her first gold and becoming the first Dutch athlete to win an Olympic title in athletics. In the hurdles, she thought she had been beaten but a close examination of the finish photo clearly showed that she had won again. Despite her amazing success, Fanny almost withdrew at the end of that day, overcome with homesickness.

After a long talk with her husband, who had first been her coach, she decided to stay. In the pouring rain, Fanny ran the 200-meter, finishing 7/10 of a second before the the runner-up—the largest margin of victory in any Olympic 200m final. Fanny was a bit late for her final event, the 4×100 relay, because she had gone out to shop for a raincoat. Still, she arrived just in time to compete. She was the last runner in the relay, and her team was behind. But after receiving the baton she managed to overtake the Australian and Canadian competitors and her team came in first, winning Fanny her fourth gold medal in the 1948 Olympics. Around the world Fanny was dubbed “The Flying Housewife”, “The Flying Dutchmam”, and “Amazing Fanny”. Welcomed home to Amsterdam with an immense crowd, Fanny was showered with praise and gifts, including a bicycle from the city itself so she could “go through life at a slower pace” and “need not run so much”.

Queen Juliana of the Netherlands even made her a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau, a chivalry order open to “everyone who has earned special merits for society”. “[T]imes were harsh and people were glad of the opportunity to celebrate anything. It made me proud to know I had been able to bring joy into people’s lives.” Fanny went on to compete in the 1952 Olympics at the age of 34. After retiring from her athletic career, Blankers-Koen served as the team leader of the Dutch athletics team for several years. Legacy “All I’ve done is run fast. I don’t see why people should make much fuss about that.” The Fanny Blankers-Koen Games, an international athletics event, was established in 1981 in Fanny’s honor. They are still held every year in Hengelo in the Netherlands. In 1999, Fanny was declared “Female Athlete of the Century” by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

Even after all her victories and accomplishments, Fanny was astonished, asking “You mean it is me who has won?” Before Fanny’s four gold win at the 1948 Olympics, women athletes were not taked very seriously and considered in a very condescending way. After Fanny, women’s athletics took on a much more positive light to the world, especially since Fanny had acheived her wins while a wife and mother. Statue of Fanny Blankers-Koen in Rotterdam, Netherlands (courtesy Wikimedia Commons) “Her place in athletics is more than just a series of outstanding performances. Her place is historical in the sense that it marked the real beginning for the acceptance on the top athletic level of women. She’s a historical figure beyond the successes she achieved.” ~ journalist Bill Guy Featured image of Fanny Blankers-Koen courtesy Wikimedia Commons .

Recommended Reading Fanny Blankers Koen - Famous Athlete Home / Olympics / Great Olympians / Athletics / Fanny Blankers Koen - Famous Athlete Fanny Blankers Koen - Famous Athlete Full Name: Francina Blankers-Koen; known as Fanny Blankers-Koen Date of Birth: 29 th August, 1946 Died on: 25 th January, 2004 Country: The Netherlands Olympic Gold Medal in 100 meter and 200 meter sprint in the 1948 London Olympics Olympic Gold Medal in 80 meter hurdle race in the 1948 London Olympics Olympic Gold Medal in 4x100 meter relay race in the 1948 London Olympics Winner of five European titles between 1946 and 1950 Winner of 58 Dutch championships Setter of 16 world records at eight different events - 100 yards sprint, 100meter sprint, 200meter sprint, high hurdles, high jump, long jump, pentathlon, and 4x110 yard relay Chosen â€œFemale Athlete of the Centuryâ€ in 19

99 by the International Association of Athletics Federations.

Career: Fanny Blankers-Koen was an outstanding and legendary all-round athlete from the Netherlands. She started her athletic career in 1935. One year later she participated in the 1936 Summer Games. The international competition was hampered during the World War II. However, during that period, Fanny Koen made several world records in events like long jump, high jump, sprint and hurdles. The 1946 European Championships held in Oslo was the first major international event after the World War II. In the competition, Fanny Blankers-Koen won gold medals in the 80 meter hurdle event and 4x 100 meter relay event. She became the leading athlete in the Netherlands in 1947. In that year, she won 6 national titles. After her experience in Oslo, Fanny decided to compete in only four events in the 1948 London Olympics. The events chosen by her were 100 meter sprint, 200 meter sprint, 80 meter hurdle race and 4x 100 meter relay race.

In the 1948 Summer Olympics, Fanny Blankers-Koen won gold medals in all the four events she had competed in. She became the first woman to win four gold medals in the Olympics. Fanny was also the first woman to win four gold medals in a single Olympics. She accomplished her Olympic titles as a mother of two children. For this reason, Fanny was given the name-â€œFlying Housewifeâ€. She was also referred to as â€œAmazing Fannyâ€ by the international press. In 1950 European Championships in Brussels, Fanny won the titles in the 100 meter sprint, 200 meter sprint and the 80 meter hurdle race, all with large margins. Fanny participated in her third Olympics in 1952, which was held in Helsinki. In spite of being in a good shape, she could not win any title in the last major competition of her athletic career. In 1955, on 7 th August, Fanny got the last victory of her career in the shot put event. It was her 58 th Dutch title. In the year, she retired from professional athletics.

After her athletic career, Fanny Blankers-Koen remained the team leader of the Dutch athletics team from 1958 European Championships to 1968 Summer Games. The international athletics event, the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games was established in 1981. In 1999, Fanny was elected the â€œFemale Athlete of the Centuryâ€ by the International Association of Athletics Federations. The legendary athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen died on 25 th January in 2004 at the age of 85. Performance at the Olympics: Fanny Blankers-Koen made her Olympic debut in the 1936 Summer Games as a high jumper. Then she was known as Fanny Koen. In her next appearance in the 1948 London Olympics at the age of 30 she won four gold medals. Fanny won in the 100 meter sprint, 200 meter sprint, 80 meter hurdle and 4x100 meter relay events. In the first competition of 100 meter sprint, Fanny set the fastest time in the semi-finals.

She finished the final in just 11.9 seconds and became the winner. Thus Fanny Blankers-Koen became the first Dutch athlete to win an Olympic title. Fanny won the 80 meter hurdle race beating her chief opponent Maureen Gardner. Both Fanny and Gardner finished the race in 11.2 seconds. However, Fanny was declared the winner. Blankers-Koen failed to start in the semi-finals of the 200 meter sprint. However, she qualified for the final. In the final, Fanny reached the finishing line in 24.4 seconds. The 4 × 100 meter final was held on the final day of the track and field competitions. In that event also the Dutch team won the gold medal beating the Australian team. Fanny Blankers-Koen participated in the Olympics for the third time in 1952.

Aquatics Fanny Blankers-Koen - Biography Bith Date: April 26, 1918 Death Date: Place of Birth: Amsterdam, Netherlands Nationality: Dutch Gender: Female Occupations: track and field athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen (born 1918) was known as the "first queen of women's Olympics." She remains the first and only woman ever to win four gold medals at a single Olympics. When Blankers-Koen began her sports career, Norman Giller noted in The 1984 Olympic Handbook, "women's athletics had been something of a sideshow.... She, more than anybody, made women athletes worthy of respect and attention, with a series of stunning performances in the London Olympics." Fanny Blankers-Koen was born Francina Elsje Koen, the daughter of a government inspector in the Dutch city of Amsterdam in 1918. Her talent in sports was evident from a very young age. Blankers-Koen came from an athletic family that encouraged her to swim, skate, and play tennis. When she was six, she joined a local sports club, where she became known as an excellent runner and swimmer.

When Blankers-Koen was 14, her father encouraged her to specialize in track and field. In 1935, when she was 17, she told everyone, "I've made up my mind to go for sport." Blankers-Koen became a member of the Amsterdam Dames' Athletic Club, and rode her bicycle 18 miles each way from her home in Hoofdorp to the gymnasium. She did not have an outdoor track to train on, so she ran indoors, in the gymnasium hallway. Blankers-Koen's first competition was in 1935, in a 200-meter race in Groningen. She did not place well at that meet, but within a month she beat the Dutch national champion in the 800-meters. At that meet, she met Jan Blankers, a talented track coach and former triple-jumper who had won an AAA scholarship in Britain. He was the track coach for the Dutch Olympic team, and he invited her to join the team.

Strangely, although she was so talented in the 800-meters, this race, like other longer distances, was considered "too difficult" for women and was barred from the Olympic competition. Blankers-Koen made her Olympic debut at age the age of 18 in Berlin, where she finished in a tie for sixth in the high jump and fifth in the 100-meter relay. For her, a highlight of the competition was meeting American athlete, Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in Berlin. In 1940 she married the Olympic track coach, Jan Blankers, and they had a son, Jan, the following year. Blankers-Koen continued to train, even through the oppressive Nazi occupation of Holland. Because of World War II, the Olympics were canceled in 1940 and 1944, and she was unable to enter international competitions. Nevertheless, she set world records in the high jump and the long jump at Dutch meets. When Blankers-Koen gave birth to her daughter Fanneke, in 1945, she had been out of training for a while.

Nevertheless, seven months later she ran in the European championships, where she won the 80-meter hurdles, ran the anchor leg for the Dutch women's team's victory in the 4 ( 100-meter relay, and came in fourth in the high jump. Just before the 1948 Olympics, she set a world record in the 100-meters, with a time of 11.5 seconds. By the time the 1948 Olympic Games convened in London, Blankers-Koen was the world record holder in the 100 meter race, the hurdles, the high jump, and the long jump. She was also 30 years old and the mother of two children. People said that her age and motherhood would slow her down, and that she should be home taking care of her children instead of out running on the track.

That kind of talk, she said, "was just the thing to rouse me," according to Len Johnson in theage.com, "to make me go out there and prove to them that, even if I was 30 years old and the mother of two children, I could still be a champion." She had been waiting 12 years to compete in the Olympics again, and she wasn't about to miss her chance. While Blankers-Koen was training for the Games, she wheeled a baby carriage to the Amsterdam stadium and parked it near the track, so she could watch her baby while she ran. No one has collected statistics on how having children affects a woman's performance in sports and how many mothers have competed in the Olympics, but it is generally believed that Fanny Blankers-Koen is the only woman in Olympic track history to have won a gold medal after having more than one child, and the only woman with more than one child even to have been on an Olympic track-and-field team.

London Olympics, 1948 Like Babe Didrickson Zaharias, another famous female athlete, Blankers-Koen was skilled in more events than the official Olympic rules allowed an athlete to compete in, with world records in the 100-yard dash, the 80-meter hurdles, the long jump, the high jump, and two relay events. Official rules limited her to competing in three individual events, and she chose to run in the 100-meters, 200-meters, 80-meter hurdles, and to be a team member for the 4 ( 100-meter relay. Modestly, according to Bert Rosenthal in Nando.net,, she said many years later at a Metropolitan Track Writers' lunch, "I didn't expect I would [win a gold] because there were other very good [competitors]. I said I hope to come in the finals." She did much more than that. In all, Blankers-Koen competed 12 times in nine days--running heats to get into the final races, as well as the final races--and won every time.

She won the 100 meters by three yards over Britain's Dorothy Manley on a wet track in 11.9 seconds. Afterward, she wanted to celebrate. According to Rosenthal, after the event her husband found her sitting on a sidewalk with other women competitors. "I said to him I would like to have a party," she said later. "He said, 'Oh no, you are going to bed. Tomorrow you have the hurdles.' I said 'I already have an Olympic gold medal.'" Her husband won, and she went to bed. The next day, she had a bad start in the 80-meter hurdles and caught up with the leader, 19-year-old Maureen Gardner of Great Britain, halfway through the race. Just as Blankers-Koen was about the take the lead, she hit a hurdle and staggered, as she said, "like a drunkard." The finish was so close that she didn't know whether or not she had won, and when the Olympic band began playing "God Save the King" she believed Gardner had won. But the band was only playing because King George VI had entered the stadium, and immediately afterward they played the Dutch national anthem to honor her gold medal win.

She and Gardner had both run the race in the world record time of 11.2 seconds, but she had been declared the winner. The tension of that race got to her, and just before she was scheduled to run the semifinal in the 200 meters, she was crying in the locker room, ready to drop out. She was exhausted and felt the pressure to win. She disliked the 200-meter race, an event that was being run by women for the first time in the Olympics, and she also missed her children. "I was having such a bad time," she said later. "I wanted to go back home to my children." Her husband told her, "If you don't want to run, it's all right. But I'm afraid you'll be sorry afterward." Blankers-Koen realized that all her life, all she had ever wanted to do was be the best. She decided to run. Blankers-Koen won the semifinal in the Olympic record time of 24.3 seconds. Then, on another wet track, she won the final by 7 yards, in 24.4 seconds.

She won her fourth gold medal in five days of running in the anchor leg of the 4 ( 100 relay for the Dutch team. When Blankers-Koen took the baton, her team was in third place, but she made up the huge deficit and caught Australia's Joyce King, who was in the lead, in the last two strides of the race. Although Blankers-Koen was the world record holder in the high jump and long jump, she didn't compete in these events. "I didn't like the high jump," she said, "and the long jump almost coincided with a hurdles heat, and I preferred one gold medal to two silvers." If she had competed in the high jump and long jump, however, she would probably have won two more gold medals, since the winners in these events all won with distances that were far short of the world records--which had been set by Blankers-Koen. After Her Olympic Wins After her Olympic victories, people compared her to African-American athlete, Jesse Owens, who had stunned the Nazis by winning gold medals in four track events in the 1936 Berlin Games. When she returned to Amsterdam, her country treated her to a huge parade.

Blankers-Koen, who rode next to her husband in an open coach pulled by four white horses, was amazed by all the excitement, and kept saying, "All I did was win some foot races." Blankers-Koen became known as the "Flying Dutch Housewife" because people considered it unusual that a married woman and mother was a world-class athlete. "After her great success," wrote Janet Woolum in Outstanding Women Athletes: Who They Are and How They Influenced Sports in America, "the media played up her role as wife and mother, sometimes overshadowing her athletic achievements. However, the image they created of her as housewife/mother/athlete helped to dispel the myth that women would lose their femininity while competing in world class track and field races." Running in the 1950 European championships, Blankers-Koen again won the 100-meters, 200-meters, and 80-meter hurdles, and won a second as a member of the Dutch relay team. When she was 34, Blankers-Koen wanted to compete in the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. Although she started the 80-meter hurdles, she was not able to qualify for the finals.

She withdrew from the Games because of a boil on her leg that led to blood poisoning and severe illness. In 1955, she officially retired from competition at the age of 37. She coached others and was the manager of the Dutch team at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City. During her almost-twenty-year career in sports, Blankers-Koen set 20 world records in seven events ranging from sprints to hurdles, long jump, high jump, and the pentathlon. No woman in the history of track has ever won as many national medals. In 1948, she was chosen as the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year. In 1980, Blankers-Koen was inducted into the International Women's Sports Hall of Fame. In 1998, she was invited to New York to receive the Jesse Owens Award. Now in her eighties, Blankers-Koen still enjoys good health and athletic vigor. She plays tennis almost every day. Further Reading For the Record: Women in Sports, edited by Robert Markell, World Almanac Publications, 1985.

Giller, Norman,The 1984 Olympic Handbook, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983. The Women's Sports Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Markell, Henry Holt and Co., 1997. Woolum, Janet Outstanding Women Athletes: Who They Are and How They Influenced Sports in America, Oryx Press, 1992. "Fanny Blankers-Koen," IAAF Legends, (November 9, 1999). "Fifty Years Ago, Blankers-Koen Was Pure Gold," Nando.net, http;// (November 9, 1999). "From Runner's World," Running After Childbirth, ~csc/runmom.html (November 9, 1999). "Grace Under Pressure--Four Times Over," Olympic Daily Flashback, (November 9, 1999). "Pacesetters: A Century of the Best," (November 9, 1999).

Fanny Blankers-Koen - Olympic Legend - SuperSport - Olympics Gold 4x100m relay Biography Nicknamed ‘The Flying Housewife’, Fanny Blankers-Koen was the most successful athlete at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. She earned the nickname because she was a 30-year-old mother of two when she claimed four gold medals, at a time when women’s athletics were not taken so seriously because of their traditional role in society. Blankers-Koen was the first woman to win four Olympic gold medals, and the first one to do so in a single Olympics. Throughout her career she set or tied 12 world records. On her return from the London Games she was greeted by a huge crowd in Amsterdam, and was presented with a new bicycle: "to go through life at a slower pace" and "so she need not run so much". Event Streaming

Question: Fanny Blankers-Koen was the first woman to win how many gold medals in a single Olympic Games in 1948?
Answer: Four