Female Olympian and Paralympian Athlete Activists

Criteria for Inclusion

First, some background: In the process of assembling appendices of notable female Olympians and Paralympians and their various “firsts” for my 2018 book about their various events, it struck me that their unique accomplishments really needed to be expanded, that their profiles needed to be expanded to a wider public. Throughout the history of the Games, while women early on were linked to notions of modesty and protection, their activism has not been limited to race, religion, ethnicity or class. Or, it turns out, to individual style(s).

It may be appropriate to begin with some definitions and delineators. Pre-eminently, this book deals with self-described female athletes—specifically, sportswomen involved in contested arenas who also go beyond their various sports to be(come) part of wider social concerns, whether they be s/heores, renegades, bad-asses, and/or supersportspeople. Sexuality and sexual orientation are not constraints, and several of my choices here are ambiguous about those issues. My decision to focus on female Olympians and Paralympians does not in any way mean to diminish general athleticism, which typically requires herculean dedication to reaching and remaining at top levels of agility, stamina, strength, and speed, or to diminish the tenacity of women athletes in general. Nor does it want to negate the commitment of sportswomen who have been involved in other venues of activism; nevertheless we can probably all agree that women who have made it to the top of their sport(s) in the Games are somehow of a different cut.

Without wanting to set them up as Greek goddesses, female Olympians and Paralympians have had my respect for some time now. Along with my continuing interest in Sport for Development and Peace (S4DP), especially in terms of gender and (dis)ability (Fuller, 2010, 2014, and forthcoming), it is only natural that most of my recent research has focused on these sportswomen (Fuller, 2016b, 2018) in terms of their historical, socio-cultural, political-economic, and actual—including extra-curricular, activities. Just as the Olympic motto is “Faster, Higher, Stronger,” so too has my mantra been to publicize the many and diverse interests and accomplishments of these spectacular women.

You may not agree with certain inclusions, such as socialite swimmer Eleanor Holm (1913–2004) who, although she won Gold in the 100 m backstroke at 1932 Los Angeles, was kicked off the American team for 1936 Berlin because she became intoxicated en route. Hollywood star Esther Williams (1921–2013) qualified for 1940 Tokyo, which was canceled due to World War 11, but she provided commentary for synchronized swimming at 1984 Los Angeles. “We can’t all win Olympic medals. Even I never won one,” she modestly acknowledged. Australian freestyler champion Dawn Fraser has had her share of controversy—stealing an Olympic flag from the emperor’s palace in 1964 Tokyo, being the driver of a car in which her mother died, and making insensitive comments about opponents, but she nevertheless was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1967, Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1998, named “Female Athlete of the Century” by the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1999, and was a torch bearer for 2000 Sydney. German equestrian Isabell Werth is an Olympic record-holder with six Golds in dressage from 1992 Barcelona, 1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney, 2008 Beijing, and 2016 Rio but the International Federation for Equestrian Sports (FEI) suspended her for horse doping.

Atalanta, a huntress heroine in Greek mythology who outraced a number of would-be suitors, is said to be the first female Olympian; her name, after all, derives from atalantos, which means “equal in weight.” Still, despite her documented swiftness, we know nothing of her helping others, and so even her story here is limited.

In many instances, it was agonizing to not be able to include some of my favorite athlete activists. Here is my working list, awaiting other suggestions from you: Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the first female president of an Olympic organizing committee (for 2004 Athens) and the author of My Greek drama: Life, love, and one woman’s Olympic effort to bring glory to her country; suffragist/gymnast Ingibjörg H. Bjarnason, the first member of Iceland’s parliament; Amelia Bloomer (1818–1894), an American women’s rights advocate who is responsible for our comfortable “bloomers” (see Pfister and Gems, 2012); Susan Butcher (1954–2006) and other dog mushers and Iditarod racers; pioneering parachutist Tiny Broadwick (1893–1978); Ann Calvello (1929–2006) and other roller derby skaters; Minda Dentler, the first female wheelchair athlete to complete in the Kona Ironman; ultrarunner Clare Gallagher and her environmental activism; race car driver Janet Guthrie; surfer Bethany Hamilton, who lost an arm to a shark who now speaks to amputees; Zeina Nassar, a German/Lebanese boxer who is advocating to compete with a headscarf; 99-year old Hungarian gymnast and Holocaust survivor Agnes Keleti; record-holding ten-pin bowler Marion Ladewig (1914–2010); Ellen MacArthur, the British yachtswoman who broke the world record for solo circumnavigation of the globe and founded a trust to help young people with cancer regain confidence from sailing; Danica Patrick, the female face of NASCAR motor racing; cricketers such as Mithali Raj, who is India’s greatest batswoman; Toni Stone (1921–1996), featured in Martha Ackmann’s 2017 Curveball: The remarkable story of the first woman to play professional baseball in the Negro league; Junko Tabei (1939–2016), a Japanese mountaineer who was the first women to summit Mount Everest and the first to climb the highest peaks on every continent; Maria Toorpakay Wazier, a Pakistani squash champion who played in boy’s clothes until being discovered and threatened by the Taliban, and no doubt many more that you readers know about.

By necessity of not being Olympians, of course this book overlooks incredibly talented women such as Australian swimmer Annette Kellermann (1887–1975), who was known as the first “motion picture mermaid,” or Marcia Frederick, the first American woman to win Gold at the World Gymnastics Championships (on the uneven bars, in Strasbourg, France, in 1978) but did not get to compete at 1980 Moscow because of a boycott. Dianne Durham, Bela Karolyi’s first national champion and the first African American elite gymnast, was sidetracked from 1984 Los Angeles due to an injury but became a motivational speaker for fellow gymnasts. Relative to Equestrians, neither Diane Crump, the first female American jockey to compete in a pari-mutuel event (Hialeah Park, FL, 1969), nor Julie Krone, the first female jockey to win both a Triple Crown race and the Breeders’ Cup, are not included here. Angelica Rozeanu (1921–2006), a Jewish Romanian known as the most successful table tennis player ever, won two decades’ worth of World Championships but never participated in the Games. Still, you should be (re)introduced to these equestrians: Allaire du Pont (1913–2006), Olympic trap shooter and preservationist; and Kathy Kusner, the first licensed female jockey and first American woman to win equestrian competition (1972 Munich) and become a licensed pilot.

Then again, this list also does not include any number of other female sporting professionals such as referees, sportscasters, coaches, trainers, and/or owners. “It takes a lot to be a professional athlete: time, commitment, serious dedication, willpower,” Meghan Werft (2017) reminds us, adding that, “For athletes who also are female, it can take even more grit to succeed in the male-dominated world of sports.” Further here, within specific Olympic sports, there are quite naturally numerous athlete activists who just did not happen to participate in the Games, a key example being tennis star Billie Jean King, winner of the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes,” founder of both the Women’s Tennis Association and the Women’s Sports Foundation (WSF), coach for Gold-medal winners Lindsay Davenport and Gigi and Mary Joe Fernandez, and a role model to old and young. It killed me to not be able to include Chris Evert, Renee Richards, and other incredible tennis players, and no doubt I will draw criticism for giving so much space to Martina Navratilova and the Williams sisters, but tennis is my particular sport.

Any number of girls deserve our attention as current and aspiring Olympians, Voltmen (2018) citing teenage Syrian refugees playing soccer with Jordanian girls, handballer Micaele Fernandes representing “One Win Leads to Another” in Rio De Janeiro, SKILLZ Street soccer as a safe haven for Cape Town girls, and Stela Savin, a Roma in Moldova who boxes before having to get married. UN Women.org highlight Pakistani footballer Hajra Khan, the first to sign with the Maldives National Women’s League; gymnast Adrielle Alexandre, who carried the torch when her country sponsored 2016 Rio, making her community violence-free; and Khalida Popal, the first captain of the women’s Afghan National Football team, who faced death threats from men who saw it as a male-only sport and who resisted for respect; now living in asylum in Denmark, she shared, “I had to choose between my family and being alive. I left my country. It was the most difficult decision. I am a woman, and I am strong. I will not be silenced.”

In some instances, it was difficult to categorize certain athletes. Some are so talented they are cross-overs, such as Clara Hughes, a Canadian who is both a cyclist and speed skater, Indian wheelchair athlete Deepa Malik, who is a biker, thrower (discus, javelin, and shot put), swimmer, and adventure sports junkie, Lolo Jones, an American hurdler and bobsledder, Mexican-Canadian Paralympic medalist Martha Sandoval Gustafson in athletics, swimming, and table tennis, or Ronda Rousey, an American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist listed here as a judoka.

Many examples of intersectionality (Nash, 2008) appear here, as you know women’s identities all too often undervalued by hierarchical oppression and stigma. My emphasis here is on individuals, but that also includes whole teams, such as Nadeshiko Japan who, after winning the FIFA Women’s World Cup and qualifying for 2012 London, have not only helped popularize the sport but also have empowered young women. A note, too, about names: Because many of these women might have begun their careers using maiden names and then added married ones, my choice has been to use what they were best known as. For example, springboard diver/swimmer Aileen Riggin (1906–2002), at age 14 America’s first female Olympic diving champion at 1920 Antwerp, was inducted in Hawaii’s hall of fame in 2018 as Aileen Riggin Soule, swimming’s oldest living Olympian. Joan Benoit Samuelson, who won the first women’s Olympic marathon at 1984 Los Angeles, still is referred to by her maiden name even if she has

been married and living in her native Maine nearly four decades. Brazilian footballer Marta Viera da Silva, widely esteemed as the greatest female soccer player of all time, is known simply as Marta, even if her real name keeps with the Portuguese custom of listing her maternal family (Viera) before the paternal one (da Silva), listed here under M. And don’t get too frustrated at Asian names that very often have the family name listed first.

In 2016, the IOC decided that, in recognition of the worldwide refugee crisis, it would include a separate admissions category so that five to ten refugees could compete. At first called the “Team of Refugee Olympic Athletes,” its name was changed to Refugee Olympic Team (ROT) in time for 2016 Rio. Inspired by Syrian swimmer Yusra Mardini’s 2018 autobiography Butterfly: From refugee to Olympian, my story of rescue, hope, and triumph, I tracked down and included two others on the ROT. Forced to leave South Sudan, Anjelina Nadai Lohalith, a 1,500 m runner competed representing Kenya, where she was taken in after her country’s civil war and Congolese-born Brazilian Yolande Mabika was chosen to participate in judo, along the way finding support in the IOC’s Olympic Solidarity program.

Before you tire of all the “firsts” associated here with many women athletes’ accomplishments, realize too the many that cannot/have not been included here because they are not Olympics related. Marisa Ingemi (2020) writes: “A first is always going to be noticed. Several women in sports know this from experience recently. Sarah Fuller is the first woman to play in a Power 5 football game. Kim Ng is the first female general manager of a Major League Baseball team. Alyssa Nakken is the first woman to be a full-time coach on an MLB staff. Blake Bolden is the first Black female scout for an NHL team.” Note that Appendix IV is dedicated to “Female competitors who were first for their countries”—including their names, countries, sport and years, but too little information was available to include them within the larger volume. We salute them all; yet, overall, taken to its ultimate, female Olympians and Paralympians set the standard, so participants in those events are the only ones to make the cut here. Beyond that, they must meet the criteria of my subtitle as activists who break records, glass ceilings, and/or social codes.

“Many an Olympic athlete will tell you what an honour it is just to represent their country at the Olympics—to parade at the opening ceremony, to compete against the most talented athletes in the world,” Australian sports commentator Peter Wilkins (2008: 58) has noted, and those elites are truly in a class unto themselves. According to the International Olympic Committee (IOC, 2016: 17), the core values of Olympism include are based on excellence, respect, and friendship, underscored by the educational themes of learning the joy of effort, fair play, respect for others, learning to pursue excellence and balance in life between body, will and mind. The motto of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is “Spirit in motion,” and it has been my honor to be involved in advocating for those athletes—at the same time being sensitive to emphasizing ableism without pushing the “inspirational” narrative and other patronizing attitudes (Fuller, 2014, 2018 a and b).

In addition to the many complex female Olympians and Paralympians whose bios are included here are a number of others whose back stories—despite rigorous research, continues to evade me. At the least, although I have made an extreme effort to include as many countries as possible, some can only be represented by their first female athletes, as noted in Appendix 1X: Extra female competitors who were first for their countries. The list includes their names, nationalities (in alphabetical order), sport and when they competed. Throughout there are superlatives—first, fastest, furthest, and such, but the truth is that it is the humanity of these athletes that shines through.

An Historical/Literature Review of Female Olympian and Paralympian Athlete Activists

Although the notion of athlete activism is increasingly becoming a genre unto itself, it has been especially focused on Black male athletes, such as James Blake’s Ways of grace: Stories of activism, adversity and how sports can bring us together (2017), Howard Bryant’s The heritage: Black athletes, a divided America, and the politics of patriotism (2019), Harry Edwards’ The revolt of the black athlete (50^th anniversary edition, 2018), Robert Scoop Jackson’s The game is not a game (2020), William C. Rhoden’s Forty million dollar slaves: The rise, fall, and redemption of the black athlete (2007), and Etan Thomas’ We matter: Athletes and activism (2018). Sport protest has been well documented (Dart and Wagg, 2016; Duchess, 2018); Kilcline, 2018; Zirin, 2009), Helen Lenskyi (2000) and Jules Boykoff (2014, 2016, 2020) being the leaders in pointing out how the Olympics operate.

A number of books have been written by individual female athletes, many cited here, and this notion of their jockography might well be a follow-up to this project; yet, to date nothing similar to this book exists. It by necessity includes topics such as institutional genderism, economic inequalities, sexual harassment, religious considerations and accommodations, the scrutinized female body (Cahn, 2015), elitism, homophobia, scandals and sponsorships, intersex and sexism, racism, doping, transgender athletes, LGBTIQ rights (Krane, 2019), social media allowances, and so much more.

Canadian women athletes have been featured in several literary sources (Bryant, 2002; Butler, 2020; Dixon, 2003), and small wonder. “Just 3.2% of sports media coverage is devoted to women’s sports, and in 2015 women’s sport only accounted for. 4% of the commercial investment in sports,” Rob Williams (2020) has written, “And yet during the Olympic Games, Canadian women regularly become national heroes.” Of particular interest is Ron Hotchkiss’ The matchless six: The story of Canada’s first women’s Olympic team (2006)—track and fielders going to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympiad that included stars such as Jane Bell, Myrtle Cook, Bobbie Rosenfeld, and Ethel Smith as well as high-jumper Ethel Catherwood and middle-distance runner Jean Thompson. While I have made an effort to be as internationally inclusive as possible, and while I am particularly defensive about not being called xenophobia, the sad truth is that most printed material available to me is in English. As part of this confession/concession, let me share how difficult it was to get any information on so many Eastern European women who prevailed for so many years in the early days of the Games. Even now, although female Olympians are “allowed” to participate from countries such as Brunei, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, there are still too many holdouts. Having lived in both Africa and Asia, it was my imperative to include as many athletes from different places in the world as possible.

Most books about the Olympic Games tend to be sport-specific, athlete-specific, or place-specific and, while there are some about its economics, environmental concerns, and political controversies, only a handful include athlete profiles (Plowden, 1995; Markula, 2009; Rule, 2017; Zuckerman, 2018). Helen Jefferson Lenskyj’s 2000 Inside the Olympic industry includes activism in terms of what happens to host cities, 2019 Seth Berkman’s A team of their own is about team comradery in the face of politics, and Kath Woodard (2012: 6) has explored power inequities in the Games that are framed by “twin issues of the gendered sexed body in politics and the body politics.” To date, though, nothing comes close to what is within these pages: Listings of outstanding players within their sporting disciplines and then individual write-ups on their relevant backgrounds, Olympic and Paralympic experiences, and how they have parlayed their extra-curricular interests into helping others.

Rachel Ignotofsky’s 2017 profiles of “50 fearless athletes who played to win” has been a welcome addition, as well as the ten women chosen for their “inspiring” stories in Zuckerman (2018), but the only other relevant books on female athlete activism are geared to children (Hasday, 2000; Rappoport, 2010; Woolum, 1998). Chelsea Clinton (daughter of Hillary and Bill, Vice Chair of the Clinton Foundation) has just released the latest in her 2020 She Persisted series for children, telling stories about a dozen American athletes. My friend and neighbor Elizabeth Weitzman, author of Renegade women in film & TV (Clarkson Potter, 2019), has commented on how great it is that there a whole new genre celebrating women has emerged. Here, then, you are in for a treat in terms of reviewing and/or learning about hundreds of women committed not only to sport but also to a range of life-changing projects.

“The Olympic Games are shrouded in an apoliticism that is in fact eminently political,” Jules Boykoff (2014: 21) has written. He calls them “a cauldron of ever-bubbling politics on low boil,” ranging from the bidding process through environmental issues and on to actual athlete statements and actions. Discussing the Games as a moment of movements, Boykoff draws on social-movement studies in terms of a two-pronged concept of framing: (1) Activist attempts to frame their grievances in the most appealing, sympathetic ways and (2) The mass media’s framing of issues and ideas, condensing the whirl and swirl of the world into consumable strips of information (p. 29). Rory Magrath’s 2021 Athlete activism: Contemporary perspectives needs particular mention, as it includes such a range of sport and scholars, declaring “It has never been the case that ‘sport and politics don’t mix’, and now, more than ever, the opposite is true. This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the politics or sociology of sport, the politics of protest, social movements or media studies.”

Geopolitics has long underscored the Games and much of those politics are gendered (Cahn, 2015; Kelly, 2018); Consider: as early 1896 Athens came protests at ‘eligibility codes’ that excluded women, and as recently as 2014 Sochi ‘heteronormativity’ is still considered an ideal, with human rights violence against members of the LGBIT community still in evidence (Fuller, 2016: 64). Here are some examples of Olympic protests: