women finally on track

Against the advice of Pierre de Coubertin, who did not want a “female Olympiad”, the French pioneer of women’s sport Alice Milliat organized the first Women’s Olympic Games in Paris on August 20, 1922, a coup that allowed women to penetrate the masculine world of sports competitions.

When Sunday joggers walk around the Pershing stadium in the Bois de Vincennes near Paris, they do not imagine that just a hundred years ago an important day in the history of sport for women was played out there.

At the time, if some were tolerated in some Olympic events, such as archery, fencing or tennis, that is to say the sports practiced by the aristocracy, they were not really welcome to the world of Olympism.

Between doctors who believe that the sport is too violent for those who have to give birth or that uncovered thighs would disturb men, women are asked to let these gentlemen run, jump and sweat between them. With the exception of women’s football which existed in Europe in the 1920s before disappearing, except in Great Britain.

– Opening up athletics to women –

At the end of the First World War, Alice Milliat, whose action in favor of women’s sport was exhumed a few years ago, engaged “a standoff” with the International Olympic Committee (IOC), tells AFP Florys Castan-Vicente, lecturer in history at the University of Lyon I in the L-vis laboratory.

After having suffered “two refusals” from Coubertin to “open the Games to women”, she decided, then at the head of the International Women’s Sports Federation (FSFI), to bring women together in Paris for an Olympic competition.

“The main battle horse was to open the athletics events to women”, explains Florys Castan-Vicente. And these first events take place at the Pershing Stadium, “a stroke of pressure” from Alice Milliat, herself a rower.

The first women’s Olympics were born, with the participation of 13 athletes from Great Britain, 22 French, 10 Czechoslovakians, 7 Swiss and 13 Americans. They bring together, according to the articles of the time, between 5 and 20,000 spectators. And the UK finished first.

— “mocking press” —

“There were a lot of misogynistic reactions in the international press, particularly the French ones. The British press that I consulted was much more enthusiastic, while the French press was often mocking,” notes the researcher.

Barely finished, these women’s Olympics lose the right to be called “Olympic” because the IOC throws a rage and deposits the word “Olympic” to own it, continuing the showdown with the FSFI.

Now called “World Games”, three editions will follow: in Gothenburg in 1926, in Prague in 1930 and in London in 1934. “Alice Milliat has created a dynamic, the Olympics will not be able to start from scratch”, explains Florys Castan- Vicente. And it’s true, women’s athletics events arrive at the Amsterdam Olympics in 1928.

The results will however be mixed because the 800 meter event will be “used to try to discredit women’s athletics”: the press at the time “says that the finalists had had nervous breakdowns and had convulsions”, relates the historian, which then led to the abolition of races over 100 meters.

In reality, this race was nothing much different from a men’s race. “Historians went to retrieve the images: there was a runner who was a little tired, no one collapsed, the world record was broken by 4 seconds by a German, one fell following the finish line”, she says.

Then, the 1930s will get the better of the advances made.

To commemorate these little-known Olympics, which took place two years before the Paris Olympics in 1924 (35 women present), the town hall of Paris presents an exhibition of photos prepared by the historian Florence Carpentier, also available online. Among these pioneers, Sophie Eliott-Lynn, “captain of the English team and vice-president of the British federation of women’s sports”, who would become a famous aviator.

Alice Milliat remains “the symbol of a demand for equality in practice”. She simply wanted women “to be able to compete internationally and see their records approved”, concludes Florys Castan-Vicente.