![]() She won three gold medals in the 1950 European championships and, despite painful boils on a leg, she ran the 80-meter hurdles in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. She chose track, and by 17 she had broken her first national record.īlankers-Koen kept running after the 1948 Olympics. The pool director soon told her she had to choose one sport. When she started track at age 15, she was already a good swimmer. She was born on a 62-acre farm outside the Dutch village of Baarn, the only daughter of a well-off father who became a government inspector. ''I didn't know the Dutch people were so interested in track,'' she said in The Times. Neighbors gave her a bicycle so she wouldn't have to run so much. Queen Juliana made her a knight in the Order of Orange Nassau. ![]() The celebration almost equaled the one held when the city was liberated from German occupation. When she returned to Amsterdam, she was driven through crowded streets in an open carriage drawn by four white horses. In seven days, she ran 11 races and won them all. Then, in the 4x100-meter relay, she took the baton for the anchor leg in fourth place, 5 yards behind the leader, and won a photo finish in 47.5 seconds. She cried, then won the 200 final by 7 yards, the widest margin ever in an Olympics, in 24.4 seconds. There is only one chance in your life that you can perhaps win three gold medals, and that's the chance that you will take.'' Years later, her husband remembered in The Times: ''I had to talk much. ''Two Olympic medals is enough,'' she said. Before the semifinals, she told her husband she was nervous and wanted to quit the Olympics because of the pressure. Next came the 200 meters and more painful moments. Instead, the music marked the arrival of King George VI, and moments later Blankers-Koen learned that she had won. When the band struck up ''God Save the King,'' she thought it meant that an English rival had won. Then the 80-meter hurdles in 11.2 seconds, an Olympic record, though she had to survive a three-way photo finish and a huge scare.įor many minutes, the judges examined the finish photo. First came the 100 meters in 11.9 seconds. In the 1948 London Olympics, the 5-foot-9, 140-pound Blankers-Koen won four of the nine track and field events for women. When I got to London, I pointed my finger at him and I said, 'I show you.' '' ''One newspaperman wrote that I was too old to run, that I should stay at home and take care of my children. I had no time for much besides my house chores and training, and when I went shopping it was only to buy food for the family and never to buy dresses. ![]() ''I got very many bad letters, people writing that I must stay home with my children and that I should not be allowed to run on a track with - how do you say it? - short trousers,'' she said in The New York Times in 1982. They would build sand castles in the dirt high-jump pit while she worked out. She pedaled to practice with her two children in a bicycle basket behind her. She trained only two hours a day, twice a week, and in the winter only on Saturday afternoons. No woman in Olympic track that year was older.Īt the time, elite track and field was still an amateur sport. In 1940, Koen married her coach, Jan Blankers, 12 years her senior, and by the time the 1948 London Olympics arrived, they were raising a son, Jan, and a daughter, Fanny.īlankers-Koen held or shared six world records - in the 100-meter dash, 80-meter hurdles, high jump, long jump, 4x100 relay and 4x400 relay - but she was 30 years old. The 19 Olympics were canceled because of World War II. Her most memorable moment came, however, when she got the autograph of Owens, the American sprinter who won four gold medals. In the 1936 Berlin Olympics, 18-year-old Francina Elsje Koen (pronounced COON) finished fifth in the women's 4x100-meter relay and sixth in the high jump. Her daughter, Fanny, said she had had serious heart problems over the past several years, Reuters reported, and the track and field federation said she also had Alzheimer's disease. The International Association of Athletics Federations, which oversees track and field, announced her death on its Web site. Fanny Blankers-Koen, a Dutch housewife who emulated her hero, Jesse Owens, and won four gold medals in track and field in one Olympics - the only woman to do so - died yesterday in Amsterdam.
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