The Flying Housewife won four golds at the 1948 London Olympics
At the 1948 London Games, a 30-year-old Dutch mother of two won four gold medals and outshone every other athlete there. Fanny Blankers-Koen, nicknamed the Flying Housewife, did more than collect titles: her victories helped kill the idea that age and motherhood ruled women out of top-level sport.
Born Fanny Koen on 26 April 1918 in Lage Vuursche, near Baarn, she grew up with five brothers and a father who threw the shot and discus. As a teenager she tried tennis, swimming, gymnastics, skating and fencing as well as running. A swimming coach steered her to the track, reasoning that the Netherlands already had star swimmers such as Rie Mastenbroek, so running offered a better route to the Olympics.
She started competing in 1935 and by her third race had set a Dutch 800-metre record, though she was picked as a sprinter, since the 800 metres had been dropped from the women's Olympic programme after 1928 as supposedly too taxing. Encouraged by her coach, the former Olympic triple jumper Jan Blankers, she went to Berlin in 1936 at 18, placing fifth in the high jump and with the relay team. Her treasured souvenir was Jesse Owens's autograph. Two bronzes at the 1938 European Championships raised hopes for the Helsinki Olympics of 1940, but the war cancelled them.
She married Blankers, fifteen years older, on 29 August 1940. He had once believed women should not compete at all and changed his mind after falling for her. When their son was born in 1942, the Dutch press assumed she was finished; she was back training within weeks. During the occupation she set six world records between 1942 and 1944, including a 5-centimetre leap in the high jump record to 1.71 metres and a long jump of 6.25 metres that stood until 1954.
Beyond her Olympic titles she won five European crowns and 58 Dutch championships and broke or matched world records 12 times, finishing with a pentathlon mark at 33 in 1951. She retired in 1955 and went on to captain the Dutch women's team. In 1999 the IAAF voted her Female Athlete of the Century. She died on 25 January 2004.
Source: Fanny Blankers-Koen
