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Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld of Barrie, Ont., was one of many Canadian stars of our nation’s most profitable Olympics, in Amsterdam in 1928. That 12 months, Canada received three gold, two silver and two bronze medals: Rosenfeld helped the squad win gold within the 4x100m relay, and in addition took silver within the 100m. In the present day would have been her 118th birthday, and to mark the event, Google Canada has honoured Rosenfeld with a Google Doodle–the day by day illustration on Google’s fundamental web page, with a hyperlink to their story.
Picture: Canadian Olympic Committee
Rosenfeld, nicknamed “Bobbie” due to her quick, bobbed coiffure, was a well-rounded athlete, excelling additionally in hockey, softball, basketball, tennis and lacrosse. She was born in Russia in 1904, and died in Toronto in 1969, at age 65. At 18, her household moved from Barrie to Toronto, the place she attended Harbord Collegiate Institute. When her aggressive profession was over, she grew to become a sportswriter for the Globe and Mail and an advocate for girls’s sports activities.
1928 was the primary 12 months that girls have been allowed to run in Olympic observe and discipline occasions, and the Canadian girls took extra medals than another nation. Rosenfeld’s teammates within the relay have been Smith, Jane Bell and Myrtle Prepare dinner. Along with Rosenfeld and the ladies’s relay crew, these Canadians earned medals: Percy Williams (gold within the 100m and 200m), James Ball (silver, 400m), Ethel Smith (bronze, 100m) and the boys’s 4x400m relay (bronze for Ball, Phil Edwards, Stanley Glover and Alexander Wilson). As well as, Ethel Catherwood of Regina received gold within the excessive soar, in a world file.
In his 2022 e book Operating By means of Time: the Best Operating Tales Ever Informed, writer Roger Robinson recounts the appalling story of the ladies’s 800m, which additionally included Rosenfeld (who completed fifth; the race was received by Germany’s Lina Radke in 2:16; Jean Thomson of Penetanguishene, Ont., was fourth).
The 800m is extensively thought-about one of the tough observe occasions. With two full laps of the observe at prime velocity, the 800m shouldn’t be a real dash, however neither is it a pure middle-distance race, however one thing in between. Athletes should preserve simply sufficient power after the primary lap and a half to dash exhausting for the ultimate 200m; in the event that they miscalculate and surge too early, they danger being swallowed up by the pack and ending lifeless final.
As new because it was for the ladies competing in Amsterdam, a number of collapsed on the end line, having given it every thing that they had. However the spectacle of younger girls mendacity on the observe after the very first Olympic 800m race was an excessive amount of for spectators and officers, who, after the Video games have been performed, efficiently had the occasion banned from future Video games. It didn’t return till 1960. Worst of all, Canada itself was one of many 12 nations that voted for the ban; in reality, Canada voted to ban girls from all observe and discipline occasions (however was outvoted).
Within the e book, Robinson says: “The tales of mass collapse and misery, amazingly constant throughout many worldwide information experiences, have been pretend information, vastly exaggerated, usually grossly inaccurate … None failed to complete. 4 or 5 fell to the grass on the end, sure, however that they had simply run large private bests; two have been sprinters racing their first huge 800.
“The litany of lies hid the reality that the race was an excellent leap ahead in girls’s operating. The primary three broke the current world file, and the primary seven (sure, seven) ran sooner than the formally ratified world mark at that date, together with two Canadians. That race deserves a revised place in historical past, not as proof of ladies’s weak point, however as a serious breakthrough in elite athletic efficiency.”
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