Once Upon a Time in the Vest

Friday, September 2, 2011

Vol. 1 No. 50 The noticeable absence of women in this blog. To be corrected.

What about women's track? I realize there is very little about women's track on this blog, because I really don't know much about women's track of the 1950's. Obviously women's track came a a long way in the 60's. Only names that come to my head are of course Wilma Rudolph, Mae Faggs, Willie White, Tennessee Tigerbelles. Steve and Roy, help me out. Stella Walsh is a story in her own right. Google her name for some interesting history. She won several Olympic golds in 1932 and 36 competing for Poland although she lived in the U.S. in Cleveland. I remember her appearing at several AAU meets in Dayton, OH in the late 50's. Can't remember if she was competing or coaching then. She won a US championship at the age of 40 in 1951. About 1960 she was hit by a stray bullet during a bank robbery and died. Her autopsy revealed that she had predominant male sexual characteristics and would have been disqualified at that time. However the rules changed at Beijing, and she would probably have been eligible in these time. I had to go back to the 1928 Amsterdam Olympics to find a race of more than one lap for women. Did they do the 800 after that until modern times? The winning time in 1928 was 2:16.7 by the German Lina Radke. I consider that quite good for the day. But what can I compare it with? there is a lot of material on the internet, so I'll continue to search and put up what I feel is interesting. For those of you not too familiar with Google, if you type a name in and then hit images in the upper left corner, a lot of good pictures of your subject will pop up. I can also recommend going to the Drake Relays , archives for a ton of really good quality pictures from that event. The ones I have of Wes Santee, Jack Davis, Wilt Chamberlain, and Tom O'Hara come from that site. I'll leave them on until Drake Relay Archives tells me to take them down. Being a neophyte at this, one can never be certain of what is private property and who cares about it.
George

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