Fire on the Track

by Roseanne Montillo

  She looked at the clock, then walked barefoot to peer into the stadium, where the crowd was roaring. At any moment she would be called to take her place at the starting line. There would be no delays at the Olympics, particularly none due to missing shoes. She debated running barefoot, but officials would not allow that. Besides, the track was in such deplorable condition, she knew it would ruin her feet.

  One of the coaches noticed her dejection and, upon discovering Betty’s predicament, he frantically sent a member of the staff to the Roosevelt to retrieve her shoe. To Betty’s surprised relief, minutes later, the man returned to the changing area, right shoe in hand. After thanking him profusely and quickly changing, she stepped onto the track—just moments before the official’s call—looked up at a sky that promised rain, and smelled the humid air.

  Having scarcely any time to warm up, on the track she met the Canadians Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld and Myrtle Cook, who were loosened up and ready to flank her. Myrtle appeared heated and wore red shorts and a white silky blouse that barely covered her small figure. She was nervous and fidgety, her breaths coming out in short, uneven bursts. The official called the athletes to the starting line, where they took their places in their respective lanes. Even the crowd seemed to sense their anxiety, so it came as no surprise when Myrtle’s apparent apprehension triggered a false start, prompting an admonition from the official. From the sidelines, Myrtle’s coach instructed her to collect herself, but being subjected to such scrutiny, of course, did little to ease her mind.

  The starter called the athletes to their places again, repeated the “set” command, and Betty and the others returned to their starting position, fixing their eyes ahead. As the official raised his gun, Myrtle once more made an early break for it. She was immediately disqualified, as regulations dictated.

  The official waved Myrtle off the track, and for a moment she did not seem to understand what had happened. Eventually, crestfallen, she was led off the track in tears by her teammates, seemingly unaware of where she was or what had just occurred. The pressure of so many spectators was having a horrible effect on the runners, for the same fate befell Leni Schmidt, a robust twenty-one-year-old blond German who had won her semifinal the previous day. She also made two false starts, but, unlike the teary Myrtle Cook, Leni was dragged off the track screaming and shaking her fists at the official.

  Four runners remained, and if Betty was flustered, she did not show it. Appraising the situation, she knew that Fanny Rosenfeld would be hard to beat; Fanny had already edged her out in the early heats, winning her own preliminary semifinal race at 12.4 seconds, but Betty had won her qualifying run in precisely the same time. Erna Steinberg did not seem much of a menace. The second of the German competitors, Erna was even younger and less experienced than Betty. Knowing that her biggest competitor was Fanny at her right, Betty strategized that if she could manage to always be aware of her position and keep Fanny in her line of vision, she would be fine.

  She inhaled deeply several times, then exhaled slowly, very slowly, as Coach Price had taught her. Deep breathing relaxed her, and a relaxed athlete had a better chance for a fast takeoff. What was important, she had been told, was a good, clean start.

  Anxious to begin, the runners planted their feet into position again. Betty heard “set,” raised her hips, and shifted her weight toward her hands. Her coaches had trained her to form a 90-degree angle with her forward knee, which she did, while focusing her eyes way down the track. She began to count her breaths again, relaxing, relaxing.

  At the crack of the starter’s pistol, the athletes leapt off the starting line like coiled springs. Fanny Rosenfeld took the lead early on, but halfway down the lane Betty caught up with her. As they neared the finish line, they were practically in step with each other, matching strides. They raced in seeming tandem for seconds and were practically neck and neck as they broke the tape, pandemonium ringing in their ears.

  Betty’s skin tingled when she felt the tape break, sweat trickling down her face as she came to a screeching halt next to Fanny. There was great chaos as the officials hesitated to call the winner—the Canadians were celebrating Fanny’s presumed victory, but Betty’s teammates were celebrating Betty’s, their faces beaming. For some reason, Betty assumed she had come in second, even as her teammates rushed forward and she found herself cocooned within their embrace. The crowd was on its feet, their cheers deafening, streamers falling down in a mass, white and heavy as a Chicago snowstorm.

  Only when the scores went up did she realize what had happened: she had won the first Olympic gold medal to be awarded to a woman in track and field.

  —

  It was a win the Americans needed. The men’s attempts had brought uniform failure (which delighted the international crowd), and Betty’s gold came at a crucial time, just as the nation’s hopes needed to be rekindled. She “flew down the stretch, surprising all the Americans,” Knute Rockne, the famed Notre Dame coach, later wrote. “Both feet were off the ground and her arms raised in triumph when she broke the tape.” He may have been embellishing the truth, given that the final was close and disputed; regardless, such embellishments were about to make the international press.

  While the American fans celebrated and Betty tried to absorb the chaos around her, a middle-aged man sat in the crowd, marking her speed in his little notebook. Frank Hill, a Chicago native, was currently the men’s coach at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, having arrived there following a long stint at Naval Station Great Lakes; there he had quickly developed a reputation for being one of the leading coaches in the country—and also one of the toughest. He believed that athletes, regardless of their gender, should not be coddled into thinking that they were the best or always would be. Now Betty interested him, in the way all strong or promising athletes interested him. He had no plans to try to meet her but suspected that their paths would cross one day, as he tucked his notebook into his breast pocket and walked out of the arena.

  —

  “What Charles Paddock, who holds more sprint records than any other man who ever ran, could not do; what Jackson Scholz, the St. Louis Sprinter, who won the 100 meters in the games four years ago, could not do; and what Lloyd Hahn, the Boston Flyer, could not do, slim Elizabeth Robinson, 15 years old [sic] Chicago girl…has done,” declared one of the many US newspapers. It continued, “The American boys who were so easily outrun by pretty much all the rest of the world ought to buy Elizabeth a big box of candy.”

  The Associated Press echoed the praise: “Where the American men had been failing dismally, Miss Robinson, the only Yankee to reach the women’s sprint final, ran a beautiful race to beat two Canadians and a German rival….Bobbed hair flying to the breezes, the Chicago girl sped down the straight-away flashing a great closing spirit to best the Canadian favorite, Fanny Rosenfeld, by two feet.”

  Her victory was described with a flourish, though most reporters stretched the truth by a wide margin (at least two feet). Betty’s finish hadn’t been as clear and clean through the ribbon as they described. At first glance, she and Fanny seemed to have crossed the finish line at virtually the same time. They were so close together that the Canadians continued to celebrate, even after the official had given the final word: Betty was awarded the gold with a running time of 12.2 seconds—a new record—while Fanny got the silver at 12.3 seconds.

  General MacArthur, in the stands to support the women athletes, watched as Betty “soared almost out of control” with “that sparkling combination of speed and grace which might have rivaled even Artemis herself on the height of Olympus.”

  A long article in the Evening American congratulated not only Betty but also itself for spotting and sponsoring her talent: “We take our hats off to this youngster, who competed in a strange country, against tried, veteran athletes. At a time when she should have weakened and faltered, she showed a stout, fighting heart and triumphed. It requires gameness to accomplish what she did and we say that she has gameness. No
t only has she brought honor to Chicago with her victory, but her feat gives America the distinction of scoring the first triumph in a women’s track event in the history of the Olympic Games. This is the first year in which the fair sex have been given recognition, and Elizabeth Robinson has shown the way.”

  In many respects, Betty typified the ideal American Olympic princess, the press announced: a dainty young woman with athletic skills, beauty, excellent grades, good manners, and a friendly attitude—a great role model for other young women (not to mention the fantasy of thousands of young men). Most important, however, she was an Olympic gold medalist—and the fastest woman in the world.

  —

  As Betty celebrated her win, Dee prepared for her race. It was a daunting challenge: the 800 meters. But she felt ready. On Wednesday, August 1, the athletes again awakened to rain that petered out to a dribble, before the gray gloom brought in a thick coat of humidity. Nonetheless, great throngs of people watched the race, one that had already been much maligned due to the strain it supposedly placed on its athletes. Reporters were wagering that few would be able to handle such a distance and wanted to see who would be the first to collapse, with newspapermen snickering and laughing in clear view and earshot of the female athletes who had come to support their teammates.

  Betty and the vast majority of the women’s team now stood on the sidelines, nearly jumping off their seats as they watched Dee and her competitors take their places. Following a large breakfast on the Roosevelt, the athletes had boarded their buses for the stadium. Dee was already sweating, complaining of the air’s denseness before she even changed into her gear. Although she was accustomed to it, she disliked running in the humidity; it felt as if a great weight were pressing on her chest.

  The mercury continued to climb to make this the hottest day of the entire Olympic Games. As they prepared for the run, the athletes swallowed great amounts of water, their shirts already clinging to their skin. After the starter pistol went off, those athletes who were unaccustomed to running the 800 meters very quickly showed signs of exhaustion.

  The lead runners reached the final lap and crossed the finish line, but spectators did not pay attention to the winner or to the other two who had medaled as much as they did to what happened next. A few of the athletes collapsed with fatigue before reaching the finish line; others began to cry. Papers detailed how the exhausted runners had gracelessly rushed to the end, some of them removing their shoes as quickly as possible in order to clean the blood oozing out of their blistered feet, while a few vomited by the sidelines.

  Reporters used the ordeal to bolster the notion that women should not be allowed to compete in track and field. The Times of London wrote: “The half dozen prostrated and obviously distressed forms lying in the grass at the side of the track after the race may not warrant a complete condemnation of the girl athletic championship, but it certainly suggests unpleasant possibilities.”

  Knute Rockne of Notre Dame also chimed in: “The half mile race for women was a terrible event….If running the half mile for women is an athletic ‘event,’ they ought to include a six-day dance contest between couples. One is as ridiculous as the other.”

  The Chicago Tribune’s judgment was harsher: “I have in front of me the picture of the half-mile for women in the Olympic Games at Amsterdam and of the eight girls who finished six of them fainted exhausted—a pitiful spectacle and a reproach to anyone who had anything to do with putting on a race of this kind.”

  Among those viewing the event was Dr. Fr. M. Messerli, who had been working with female athletes for several years. In a report he wrote after the race, he stated, “When reaching the winning post, two Canadians and one Japanese competitors [sic] collapsed on the lawn, the public and the journalists believed them to be in a state of exhaustion. I was judging this particular event and on the spot at the time, I can therefore certify that there was nothing wrong with them, they burst into tears betraying their disappointment at having lost the race, a very feminine trait!”

  Betty witnessed the entire event. Although she had won a gold medal in the inaugural track-and-field event, she was not in a position to judge whether or not women should be allowed to participate in the 800 meters. She had never raced longer distances, and her training had commenced only months earlier, leaving her still unaware of what a body potentially could or could not sustain.

  Nonetheless, as the new queen of the track, she was asked her opinion of the 800 meters. She answered, to the detriment of her fellow athletes. “I believe that the 220-yard dash is long enough for any girl to run. Any distance beyond that taxes the strength of a girl, even though some of them might be built ‘like an ox,’ as they sometimes say. Some of the scenes at the finish of various 800-meter races recently have been actually distressing. Imagine girls falling down before they hit the finish line or collapsing when the race is over! The laws of nature never provided a girl with the physical equipment to withstand the grueling pace of such a grind….I do not profess to be an expert on heart and nerve reaction to the longer distances, but common sense will tell you that they must be quite severe.”

  It was not the answer the women athletes, particularly her teammates, expected to hear or appreciated. Those women had been running for years, and to them reports of Amsterdam’s 800 meters felt grossly exaggerated. The chastising comments made by a young woman who’d won by only a fraction of a second seemed to them not only ignorant but offensive.

  After the Olympics those athletes had to endure a barrage of snide and unsavory articles, including one in The New York Times. “When the race was tried at Amsterdam in 1928,” it said, “the gals dropped in swooning heaps as if riddled by machine-gun fire.” Newspapers from all corners of the globe emphasized the so-called shocking spectacle of the finish. Wythe Williams could not contain his flair for the dramatic: “The final of the women’s 800-meter run plainly demonstrated that even this distance makes too great a call on feminine strength. At the finish six of the nine runners were completely exhausted and fell headlong on the ground. Several had to be carried off the track. The little American girl, Miss Florence MacDonald, who made a gallant try but was outclassed, was in a half faint for several minutes, while even the sturdy Miss Hitomi of Japan, who finished second, needed attention before she was able to leave the field.”

  —

  Count Henri de Baillet-Latour, who had succeeded Coubertin as president of the IOC, partially agreeing with those who believed that such races were too strenuous for women, thereafter suggested that perhaps “aesthetic events”—that is, sports with a perceived feminine bent, such as gymnastics and tennis—would be more appropriate.

  The critics and educators who’d been arguing the harm that such “laborious” sports caused to women’s bodies used the 800 meters to advocate the elimination of all women’s sports from future Olympics. Although such dramatic motions didn’t succeed, the event was removed from the Games and would not be reinstated until 1960. In its stead, the IAAF instituted the 100-meter hurdles, which was less maligned.

  Though the race was criticized internationally and widely regarded as disastrous for the women, the men’s 800 was never scrutinized or questioned, despite the fact that the male runners had suffered a similar fate. Only the St. Louis Globe-Democrat picked up on the discrepancy. “Thursday afternoon at the finish line of the 800 meter run, two men fell to the track completely exhausted. One man was carried to his training quarters helpless. Another was laid out upon the grass and stimulants used to bring him back to life,” its article read. “All that officials said was that the race was a good one; that ‘Breitreux was gone; that Range ran a good race’; yet no one condemned the race as being a detriment to the good of mankind, to the welfare of the runners.”

  Later studies would prove that women are not only capable of running such distances but actually excel in longer ones, as their bodies are much more capable of doing so than men’s. Women, by their physical nature, are born with a larger supply of fat o
n their limbs, nearly 10 percent more than their “equally trained men.” While training, fat is used as fuel, allowing women to run more efficiently and for longer periods, reaching the end of their races with their gas tanks only half empty. But in 1928, the so-called experts did not yet know what women were capable of achieving. And neither did Betty.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A NEW BABE IN TOWN

  “An American girl helped to restore the prestige of the Olympic Team today and again brought the Stars and Stripes fluttering to the central flagstaff,” an American newspaper wrote. “Elizabeth Robinson, to the surprise of herself, team officials, and the crowd generally, won the 100-meter dash.”

  The papers devoted numerous pages to the athletes, Betty’s tale and triumphs in particular dominating sports pages across the country. In fact, her victory stole the headlines from the men’s attempts at glory, distracting the public from the reality that her male teammates had failed miserably. Reporters heralded Betty’s grace, her defiance, and her athleticism. From coast to coast, and especially in Riverdale, she became an instant celebrity.

  In a small, oil-soaked town in Texas, a wiry young girl devoured those reports from her father’s newspapers. She had been doing so since learning her alphabet, her favorite section being the sports pages. During the summer of 1928, she closely followed the Olympians in Amsterdam. She did not know where Amsterdam was, or how anyone got there, but it sounded fun, exotic, and, according to the descriptions, as hot as it was in Beaumont. In late August, as the Olympics were nearing the end, she saw splattered across the pages photographs of and headlines about a young woman who’d recently made history.

  The whole world had now seen a picture of Betty—not one of her in her running gear, crossing the finish line as she won the 100 meters (although that picture existed) but a fetching photograph showing her wearing a tidy stylish hat and little white gloves, her hands crossed demurely over her lap and a string of pearls falling from her neck. The image portrayed a well-behaved young woman who, according to some, had done a very unladylike thing in winning the first gold medal awarded to a woman in a very masculine endeavor.