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| Gertrude Ederle |
Background
Women were banned from participating at the first Olympics of the modern era held in Athens in 1896, and a key strand to the story of the Games since then has been their long battle for equality as competitors. Slowly female involvement increased as more women's events became part of the Olympic programme at each Games, but even by the 1948 London Olympics only ten per cent of the athletes competing were female. One of the main forces in their progress to gain increasing Olympic recognition were the athletic performances of a wave of women each of whose achievements helped challenge and overcome prevailing stereotypes as to what was right and proper for members of 'the fairer sex.' One such was the American swimmer Gertrude Ederle. Having won three medals at the 1924 Paris Olympics she was on the public radar but what made the sporting and wider world really sit up was her swim across the English Channel two years later. At that time only five people - all men - had successfully completed this feat, which was regarded as the swimming equivalent of climbing Mount Everest and viewed as simply beyond women. At nineteen years old she confounded the nay sayers by not only swimming the Channel but by doing so in a time that was more than two hours faster than the fastest of her male predecessors.
Women were banned from participating at the first Olympics of the modern era held in Athens in 1896, and a key strand to the story of the Games since then has been their long battle for equality as competitors. Slowly female involvement increased as more women's events became part of the Olympic programme at each Games, but even by the 1948 London Olympics only ten per cent of the athletes competing were female. One of the main forces in their progress to gain increasing Olympic recognition were the athletic performances of a wave of women each of whose achievements helped challenge and overcome prevailing stereotypes as to what was right and proper for members of 'the fairer sex.' One such was the American swimmer Gertrude Ederle. Having won three medals at the 1924 Paris Olympics she was on the public radar but what made the sporting and wider world really sit up was her swim across the English Channel two years later. At that time only five people - all men - had successfully completed this feat, which was regarded as the swimming equivalent of climbing Mount Everest and viewed as simply beyond women. At nineteen years old she confounded the nay sayers by not only swimming the Channel but by doing so in a time that was more than two hours faster than the fastest of her male predecessors.
Early editions of the Olympics saw open water used for swimming competitions, with the sea in the Bay of Zea and the River Seine respectively providing the venues at the 1896 Athens and 1900 Games.
London 2012 Olympic Swimming
London 2012 Olympic Swimming
Swimming is a sport were women have achieved equality with their male counterparts at the Olympics, with the total of 34 available swimming gold medals at London 2012 divided on the basis of 17 apiece for men and women.
Olympics Photo Quiz 11
What is the name of the South African swimmer who, having lost a leg in a motorcycle accident, participated in both the Beijing Olympics and Paralympics in 2008?
The Answer will be published along with the next Highly Questionable quiz and associated blog post.
Olympics Photo Quiz 10 Answer
Iranian Hossein Rezazadeh was the athlete who at the 2004 Athens Games lifted the heaviest weight ever made at the Olympics when he clean and jerked 265.5kgs.
The author of the Highly Questionable? quiz and trivia blog, Harry Reid, is a freelance question setter, writer and blogger. He can be contacted at harryreid@btinternet.com
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