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by Ron Fimrite
Shortly before she was to run the 200 meters at the London Games, Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands collapsed in tears at her locker at Wembley Stadium. Winner already of the 100 meters and the 80-meter hurdles, the 30-year-old Dutch housewife had finally run herself into an emotional block. She was exhausted. She felt crushed by the pressure of winning. She desperately missed seeing her two young children, Jan and Fanny. And she detested the 200 meters, a race run by women for the first time in these Olympics. "I was having such a bad time," she later recalled. "I wanted to go back home to my children."
Before her stress-filled 200, Blankers-Koen easily won the 100 for her first of four golds.
photograph by
Blankers-Koen, born Francina Elsje Koen, the daughter of a government inspector, had waited 12 years for these Games. As an 18-year-old novice at the 1936 Berlin Games, she had finished in a tie for sixth in the high jump and had run on the 4'100 Dutch relay team that finished fifth. But her track career was stalled by the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II and believed to be at an end after she married her coach, Jan Blankers, and gave birth to their two children. She quickly resumed competing after the war, however, and established herself as a premier athlete.
By the time of the '48 Olympics she was the world-record holder in the 100, the hurdles, the high jump and the long jump. Still, at 30, she was considered too old to be much of a factor in London. Such talk, she said, "was just the thing to rouse me."
On Aug. 2 Blankers-Koen won the 100 by three yards on a wet track in 11.9 seconds. But her gold in the 80-meter hurdles the following day came the hard way. Off to a bad start, she caught the leader, 19-year-old Maureen Gardner of Great Britain, midway through the race. Then, as Blankers-Koen was about to move into the lead, she hit the fifth hurdle and staggered, she said later, "like a drunkard" to the finish in a virtual dead heat with Gardner and Shirley Strickland of Australia. When Blankers-Koen heard the stadium band strike up God Save the King, she was convinced she had lost. She was told the band was merely paying tribute to King George VI, who had that minute assumed his seat in the royal box. It was then that she heard the Dutch anthem, Wilhelmus. She had been declared the winner in a photo finish with Gardner, and both runners had established a world record of 11.2.
But the tension of that day had exacted a grievous emotional toll. And minutes before Blankers-Koen was to run her semifinal heat in the 200, she was sobbing at her locker, preparing to withdraw. At that point her husband approached her, having convinced a locker room attendant of his wife's distress. "If you don't want to run, it's all right," Jan told Fanny. "But I'm afraid you'll be sorry afterward."
Fanny looked up at him, her distinctive blue-gray eyes streaked with red. She suddenly realized that all her life "I had wanted to do everything the best." She would run.
Blankers-Koen won her heat in the Olympic record time of 24.3, and then, on another soggy track, won the final by seven yards, in 24.4. (The women's 200 final will be run tonight at Olympic Stadium.) She went on to win her fourth gold medal in five days when she anchored the Dutch 4'100 relay team to a come-from-behind victory over Australia. She could well have won two more golds if she had competed in two other events, for the winning leaps in both the high jump and the long jump were well below her world records.
Blankers-Koen returned home to Amsterdam a national hero. At a parade in her honor, tens of thousands of her compatriots cheered as she was driven through the city in an open carriage. She tried to compete at the 1952 Helsinki Games but had to withdraw because of a skin condition. She coached for a time and served as a manager of the Dutch team at the 1968 Mexico City Games. Mostly, she did what she enjoyed best, being a wife and mother.
Last April she turned 78, but her athletic vigor hasn't waned. She still plays tennis almost daily.
SI Olympic Dailies
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