Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Notable Early Women Olympians About this episode Despite Pierre de Coubertin's vision of the Olympics being for male athletes only, women did participate in the games starting in 1900. But the road to equal participation was long and filled with disappointments.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:17 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:28 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey. And I'm Tracy V. Wilson. It's Olympics time once again. Yes.
2:38 Holly Frey? We've discussed the Olympics many times on the podcast before, but today we are going to focus on women who participated in the early iterations of the modern Olympic Games, or at least tried to. One of the people that we're talking about today is technically not an Olympian. She was not allowed to compete. She was also not a woman, but a teenage child. And we're juxtaposing their stories against the famously problematic takes of Pierre de Coubertin when it came to women in sports. So we're going to talk about three
3:18 Holly Frey? sportswomen of the early 1900s and the work that they did to be part of the Olympic Games. I'm laughing because we've talked about Pierre de Coubertin a number of times, and I just sort of forgot that layer. Like, I jettisoned it from my mind.
3:36 Holly Frey? And now I've been reminded. He, it's interesting because there have, as we're about to discuss, been some efforts to kind of rehab his misogyny a little bit. No, no thanks. But then when I look back at his actual writings, there's no way around it, which we will talk about. Yeah. As we go on. Yeah. So, the 1900 Olympic Games, those were the first ones in which women were allowed to participate. And you might imagine, based on what we just said, that's almost miraculous, given that the recognized father of the modern Olympic movement, Pierre de Coubertin,
4:17 Holly Frey? was just not a fan of women in sports. He's known for saying inspiring things like, quote, "Sport is the birthright of all, equally and to the same degree, and nothing can replace it." But also saying, quote, "As to the admission of women to the Games, I remain strongly against it. It was against my will that they were admitted to a growing number of competitions." There's actually a really interesting framing of all of this on the International Olympic Committee website, where this problem and this problematic ideology is framed as
4:55 Holly Frey? Kubatyn protecting women. The IOC shares the Kubatyn quote from his writing in 1928, which states, "If some women want to play football or box, let them, provided that the event takes place without spectators, because the spectators who flock to such competitions are not there to watch a sport." So they're making the case that he didn't want any lecherous looky-loos being unchivalrous around ladies in sport, which also kind of brings up the issue of like, is that the only reason you can think of that someone might want to watch women do athletic things? The IOC does note that he left the decision to the Olympic Committee and he didn't block
5:40 Holly Frey? women from the Games, even though he was openly against it. Yeah, the IOC is clear, though, that his opposition to women's sports was ongoing, even as he was touting the importance of equality in education. So he was kind of a mixed bag. As we will see, he had some very choice words when women tried to take matters into their own hands with this. So women were allowed to participate in the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris, but only in five of the 20 categories, and those were croquet, equestrianism, golf, sailing, and tennis. Comedically, the poster that became the most popular for the Games and
6:20 Holly Frey? was adopted as the primary advertisement for the 1900 Olympic Games was one that depicted a woman in fencing gear, carrying a foil, a pay, and saber, despite the fact that women were still barred from fencing in the Games. That poster was created by Jean de Peleologou, who was a very popular poster artist in Europe and the US at the time.
6:44 Holly Frey? It is unclear why he depicted a woman fencer in it. I never found any documentation of why he went that route. That inclusion of sailing as a sport women could participate in for the 1900 Games did open the door for our first notable woman from Olympic history. Hélène de Portales was born Hélène Barbey in New York City on April 28th, 1868. But she was, from the beginning, a child who really lived in two worlds. The first, New York, was where her mother's family was located. Mary Laurillard, Hélène's mother, was an heiress to the Laurillard Tobacco Company fortune. And then her father, Henri Isaac Barbey, was Swiss.
7:29 Holly Frey? He had made a lot of money through US investments, including in railroads. This family had homes in New York and in Switzerland, and they would spend the autumn and winter in the US and then go to Europe for the summer. When Hélène, who was the second of their seven children, was young, she stayed on that schedule. But then, while she was still a child, Switzerland became her primary residence, presumably also the primary residence of her siblings, because their parents became concerned that New York was not good for the children, what with all the crowds and pollution. So, life in Geneva, Switzerland for the family was one of wealth and privilege.
8:12 Holly Frey? Among the many luxuries they enjoyed were boats, which Henri loved, and he passed that love on to his children. Boating was a huge part of their family life on Lake Geneva. Henri had his own steam-powered yacht there, which he brought from North America, and the family was close with other Geneva families of wealth who shared their love of yachting. So, it makes sense that she married a man from one of those families. That was Count Hermann Alexandre de Portales, who was her senior by 21 years. They got married in 1891, when Hélène was 23. Her husband's first wife had died three years before he and Hélène got married.
8:53 Holly Frey? And then, when they got married, Hélène became the stepmother to four Portales children.
9:00 Holly Frey? Ellen's time on the water continued as a wife as she and Armand not only yacheted and sailed together for enjoyment, they also competed in regattas regularly and they won quite a few of them. So when the 1900 Games opened up its sailing entries, they had already been in a constant state of training and winning. They were considered some of the very best boaters in Europe at this point. Ellen and Armand registered to compete with their sailboat, La Reina, representing Switzerland with a crew consisting of themselves and Armand's nephew Bernard Alexandre Georges Edmond de Portelais. During the qualifying round on May 20, 1900, the La Reina, which was in the 20-foot
9:42 Holly Frey? class, both literally and figuratively sailed through the 11-kilometer course known as the concours d'honneur. That event took place at Moulin-en-Yvelines, just northwest of Paris. Ellen and Armand had to manage through some conditions that did not provide much wind at all for their sails, but that was something they were already really good at, so it did not pose a challenge for the two of them. That was not the case for everybody, though. According to Olympic historians, of the more than 49 boats that entered the qualifier, only seven of them finished within the required time limit. And the finishing
10:22 Holly Frey? group got cut down to only five because two of them were disqualified for cheating. They had used some kind of propulsion that was more than their sails to make up for this lack of wind that day. Those numbers can be very confusing. We will talk more about that. It's about to get real weird with the numbers. So the first race for the Portelais Switzerland team took place on the Seine on May 22, and the La Reine sailed under the assigned number 22 in the 1 to 2-ton category. This was a 19-kilometer course. That is a little more than 10 nautical miles. If you want standard miles, that's almost 12. And it was a difficult course as 9, or perhaps 65.
11:09 Holly Frey? Competitors had qualified and there was a lot of maneuvering to get from the start to the finish to accommodate all of those yachts. Listen, that's a big gap in numbers and it doesn't match up with the numbers Tracy just said, and it is one of the many problems with historical accounts of the 1900 Games. 65 participants is almost certainly wrong. There were not anywhere near that many qualifiers, or even people who tried to qualify. There are only nine boats listed in the official record, which contradicts that previous number of seven qualifiers. But the journal Yachting World that was on scene reported 65. That magazine also
11:53 Holly Frey? described the confusion of the race due to the many participants. Quote, "The river was absolutely blocked with vessels of all shapes, rigs, and sizes, and it became exceedingly difficult to keep clear of each other. The big vessels, which had started later, brought up a breeze with them and ran right up to the smaller craft so that at the turning mark, every boat was huddled up together." Because of the general confusion about this event, it's possible that there were some non-qualified boats in the water. Maybe people just running this course for themselves. Or maybe a journalist pumped up the numbers for some reason, or maybe that journalist didn't do it on purpose. They just didn't understand what was happening and they were counting boats that
12:37 Holly Frey? were not actually trying to compete. It's all really unclear why the periodical Yachting World was just so far off the numbers compared to everyone else.
12:50 Holly Frey? I'm willing to cut them some slack, though, because as we have talked about on this show before, there was confusion about the Olympics being wrapped up with the 1900 exposition. And some people that competed in the Olympics didn't even know it was the Olympics. They just thought they were doing like some sporting event for the expo. So it's possible that there were more boats in the water because they thought they were doing an expo regatta and... We don't know. We can't unravel this particular knot. But what we do know is that Alain served as the Lorraine skipper and she and her team won that race. They were awarded the gold medal. And there is also some confusion about whether or not they got an additional prize.
13:34 Holly Frey? We're going to talk about that in a moment. That is also tied to those less than thorough or less than clear accounts that we have of the event. There was a second race on May 27th on the same course with the same boats. And in that one, the Lorraine took the silver while the German boat, Aschenbrödel, won the gold. Why were there two races that were essentially identical, made up of the same competitors that didn't end up with an aggregate score to determine an overall champion? We don't know. Unclear.
14:06 Holly Frey? For a long time, and you'll still see it in a lot of places, tennis player Charlotte Reinigl Cooper was credited as being the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal. She did win in women's singles tennis, but Cooper didn't receive her medal until later on in the Games on July 11th. That was 50 days later compared to when the Lorraine's team went to the gold. This oversight has also been because Cooper was a solo competitor, whereas Alain de Portelet was part of a team. We actually made this distinction in our episode about Charlotte Cooper came out a couple of years ago. And because Alain did not ever compete again, she just wasn't somebody whose name stayed
14:50 Holly Frey? in the news. In addition to all those factors, though, there's also the fact that the entire yachting category at the 1900 Games has been a matter of debate among Olympic historians. Yeah, as we've said, these specific games have come up on the show before in an episode dedicated to them by prior hosts Sarah and Dublina and by us when we did a live show about Pierre de Coubertin at the Dallas Museum of Art a number of years back. These games were a mess. As I said a moment ago, these ran in conjunction with the Paris Exposition. Many athletes were confused about whether or not they were participating in the Olympics. And as we've talked about, even the reporting of the events was really confusing.
15:34 Holly Frey? And in addition to medals, the winners in some of the categories in the yachting events were given cash prizes. And that's led to arguments about whether those can be considered Olympic events at all. But if I understand correctly, after kind of going down a rabbit hole and trying to suss out like tables of events and who got what, again, which may or may not all be accurate, those cash prizes were not given for the one to two ton class that Elen and her family participated in. So in spite of all the messy and confused nature of the 1900 Paris Games, for a brief time, Elen de Portelez enjoyed kind of a spark of notoriety, at least among other
16:17 Holly Frey? yachting enthusiasts in Europe's aristocracy. Her husband Herman died four years later, and then she lived another 41 years without him. She died in Geneva in 1945. Coming up, we will talk about a very young athlete who wanted to compete alongside men in the Olympic Games, and we'll hear more about Kubertin's thoughts on the matter. But first, we will take a quick sponsor break.
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19:25 Holly Frey? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesse have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might. Break into song from leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch. Nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only
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20:30 Holly Frey? In 1912, Pierre de Coubertin wrote an article titled Les Femmes aux Jours Olympians, or Women in the Olympic Games. And in this article, he made it very clear where he stood on women participating in the Olympics. We're actually gonna read a good bit from this because while he himself claims that chivalry is part of his logic and that his position is for the benefit of the women in the games, the things he wrote are undeniably sexist. One brief quote from it that women's athletics would be, quote, impractical, uninteresting, unaesthetic and improper, circulates all the time, but it's out of context. I think it's even worse in context. And the rest is, in my opinion, far more damning and it really cannot be wrapped in
21:15 Holly Frey? any kind of revisionist bow. So he opened by referencing a recent hopeful woman competitor. Quote, "Not long ago, an application signed by a neo Amazon who intended to compete in the modern pentathlon was received. The Swedish committee, which was free to take its own position, refused the agreement in the absence of any established legislation. So it is clear that the debate remains open." The woman he was referring to was Helen Priest. She was a teenager from England. She did not wait for permission for women to compete. She just registered to be in the games, knowing that she would be competing alongside male athletes.
21:59 Holly Frey? And despite her young age, she was an accomplished equestrian competitor already. Dorothy Helen Priest, who went by Helen, was born in London on November 11th, 1895. And her parents were Ambrose Ernest Duncan and Edith Clay Priest, and they ran a riding school. Helen was their first child, and when she was six or seven, the Priests moved from London to the suburb of Kingsbury, where the family expanded their business into a much larger operation, spread across many acres. By the time the family made that move, Helen, who had been riding since she was three, was already competing in riding competitions, and she was winning. But Helen wasn't only interested in sports that involved horses.
22:44 Holly Frey? During her time at Corrin Collegiate School as a teen, she also played lacrosse and other sports. But horses remained her primary area of competition, and she gained a following doing it. She loved jumping in particular, and she was incredibly dynamic as a competitor, apparently. Anybody who was into horses in England knew who she was. And even people who really weren't into horses almost certainly saw her picture in the papers. She appeared often in write-ups about horse shows and horse riding. In the spring of 1910, it seems as though every paper in London and its suburbs, and even some papers in the US, ran a story about Queen Alexandra giving Helen five pounds
23:28 Holly Frey? and telling her how admirably she had performed after the young rider won a jumping competition at a polo pony show. In some of her competitions, she rode against boys and often won. Sometimes, in those cases, she was the only competitor riding side saddle. In the autumn of the following year, she traveled to New York City to compete in a coed horse show, and she won numerous events. Riding against both boys and men as well as adult women. And that led her to be lauded as one of the best riders in the world and definitely the best female rider. Remember, she was still a teenager of about 16 at this point.
24:08 Holly Frey? In July of 1912, articles appeared throughout Europe and North America saying she was set to participate in the Games. One that was written in England and then appeared in the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, New York read, quote, "Miss Priest, who will be the only female representative at the Games, has won fame here as an expert horsewoman and athlete generally, and her abilities are not unknown in the United States." The write-up goes on to mention her riding awards, her skills in swimming and fencing, and her strength at cross-country running. The article included a quote from Helen about her hope to win the pentathlon and that she knew it was very ambitious but had been training with her father and friends.
24:53 Holly Frey? And they believed in her. She was ready to compete in the five pentathlon categories of fencing, pistol shooting, swimming, cross-country running, and of course, horseback riding. That, of course, included jumps, which she almost certainly could dominate. Because of her young age, she had to get permission to take a leave of absence from school. And it seems that Helen didn't realize that her involvement in the Olympic Games in this way could be controversial. In later writing about it, it seemed that she didn't have a full sense of what the event even was. She knew there were multiple competitions across different sports, but she did not appear to have any knowledge that it was supposed to be men only.
25:37 Holly Frey? The official description that the Olympic Committee had prepared did not specify as such. That was going to be the first year that the pentathlon even happened. And because there wasn't a pentathlon national committee in Great Britain at the time, athletes were allowed to submit applications cold, without going through the same level of red tape and qualifiers as other events would have required. Her father apparently did know that this was supposed to be men only. It seems that he actually contacted the British Olympic Association and asked about it. But even after he got told that it was for men, the priestess pressed on and they actually hired a press agent to talk about Helen's Olympic plans. When the British Olympic Association received Helen's completed paperwork, they've
26:22 Holly Frey? reached out to the Swedish Olympic Committee, who were hosting the 1912 Games, asking for their guidance about this lady applicant. They consulted Kubert Tab, but he said it was the committee's decision. All of Helen's training and planning were for naught because the Olympic Committee barred her from competing after a vote. There's some uncertainty about how much she understood the situation because later in her life, she said that her age had been the problem. It is also a little bit unclear if Helen had intended to enter the 1916 Games in Berlin. Her father had made some inquiries about it to the British Olympic Committee, but the start of World War I eclipsed any such thoughts.
27:06 Holly Frey? Helen and her father Ambrose moved to the United States with a number of their horses when the war began. And on March 20th, 1915, Helen married George Chipchase, a horseman and stable manager who had supported her career and had arranged pairing her with various horses owned by himself and others for competitions. So they had known each other for quite a while when she was still a teenager, which is weird. This marriage led to some drama. George's first wife sued Helen just a few months after the wedding, claiming that she and George had never gotten divorced. And so the marriage wasn't legal and that Helen was not entitled to use the Chipchase name.
27:48 Holly Frey? There's a funny thing here where the write-up suggests that the wife thinks that Helen is going to use this name to bolster her image. And I'm like, she was already famous with her maiden name? I'm not sure what was going on there. Despite all of that drama, Helen stayed with George until they divorced in 1928. She married- Riding instructor John Leslie Smith in 1934. They did not stay married more than a few years. And throughout all of this, Helen remained very busy in the horse world. She was running a riding school. At that point, she had moved to Aiken, South Carolina, and she married for a third time in 1942 to a man named Nelson Lewis. That seems to have been a very good match.
28:30 Holly Frey? They stayed together for 43 years until Nelson's death in 1986. Helen died at the age of 94 on July 2nd, 1990. Helen's attempt to participate in the 1912 Pentathlon stirred up a lot of public opinion. And of course, Kubert's son had big feelings. He continued in the 1912 essay we quoted from earlier, quote, "I feel that the Olympic Games must be reserved for men. First, in application to the well-known proverb, a door must be either open or closed. Can we allow women to access all Olympic events? No, then why should some sports be open to them while the rest are not?
29:14 Holly Frey? Above all, what basis can one use to place the barrier between the events that are permitted and those that are not? There are not just women tennis players and swimmers. There are women fencers, women riders, and in America, women rowers. In the future, will there be perhaps women runners or even women football players? Would such sports played by women constitute a sight to be recommenced before the crowds that gather for an Olympiad? I do not think that any such claim can be made." Kubert Dan goes on to talk about what he feels is the more practical problem of the idea of women in Olympic sports.
29:55 Holly Frey? And it honestly starts to sound really comedic, like he's just making excuses. He thinks the question of whether women should compete separately or alongside men in the same competitions is simply too hard to figure out. And then he notes that women are just not good athletes, stating, quote, "Let us not forget that the Olympic Games are not parades of physical exercises." But aim to raise, or at least maintain, records. Sidious, altius, fortius, faster, higher, stronger. He stated that, quote, "Whatever the athletic ambitions of women may be, they will never be as good at sports as men, apparently," and, quote, "To bring the principle of the theoretical equality of the sexes into play here
30:38 Holly Frey? would be to indulge in a pointless demonstration, bereft of meaning or impact." His next argument, which somehow is even more condescending than all of his earlier ones, is that it would just be too hard to have these events just for women, and ladies should just be enthusiastic observers. Quote, "There remains the other possibility, that of adding women's competition alongside men's competitions in the sports declared open to women, a little female Olympiad alongside the great male Olympiad. What is the appeal of that? Organizers are already overworked, deadlines are already too short,
31:20 Holly Frey? the problems posed by housing and ranking are already formidable, costs are already excessive, and all that would have to be doubled. Who would want to take all that on? In our view, this feminine semi-Olympiad is impractical, uninteresting, ungainly, and I do not hesitate to add improper. It is not in keeping with my concept of the Olympic Games, in which I believe that we have tried and must continue to try to put the following expression into practice: The solemn and periodic exaltation of male athleticism based on internationalism by means of fairness in an artistic setting
32:05 Holly Frey? with the applause of women as a reward. This combination of the ancient ideal and the traditions of chivalry is the only healthful and satisfactory one. It will impose itself on public opinion through its own strength." As Kubertin was spinning his wheels about women sullying the Olympic Games, Alice Milja was seeking reforms. And we're going to talk about her right after we hear from the sponsors that keep the show going.
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33:10 Holly Frey? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
33:55 Holly Frey? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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36:21 Holly Frey? Alice Josephine Marie Millon was born on May 5, 1884, in Nantes, France. Her parents were working class. They ran a shop for a while and then they closed it and got jobs elsewhere. We don't have a ton of information about her life as a child, but what we know is that when she was 20, she moved to London looking for work. Alice did find work as a tutor, and she also found a husband. In 1904, she married a man who was also from Nantes, Joseph Millat. Sadly, the two of them were only married for four years because he died suddenly in 1908. Alice stayed in London for a couple more years, but ultimately decided to go back to France. By that time, she had been
37:05 Holly Frey? on trips to the US and around Europe and had become multilingual, so she started working as a translator. During the time between losing her husband and returning to France, Elise had also picked up a passionate love of sports. She played field hockey and other track and field sports, and she loved swimming. But her true love was rowing. She looked for and found other women who loved to do all these things. That was with a group called Feminist Sport, which was founded in 1911 by Pierre Pessy to promote dance and athletics. By the time Elise was back in France, this group had started sponsoring soccer and rugby games for women players, as well as cycling events.
37:48 Holly Frey? This was all considered sort of outlandish at best and scandalous at worst, but the participants loved it. And they did have supporters. And there was, at its core, a growing feminist movement that wanted equality. Mia was a natural leader in this space and became an organizer of groups designed to promote women's sports. Just a few years later, in 1917, she was instrumental in launching the Federation of Women's Sports Societies. This and Feminist Sport were not surprisingly founded by women, but women were part of the leadership from the beginning. Elise was the first treasurer and then became secretary a year later.
38:31 Holly Frey? And in 1919, she became its president. A year later, the entirety of the club's leadership was made up of women. She would later write in a magazine article that she thought it was abnormal for men to be at the helm of women's sports organizations. The group's goal was to get their efforts beyond France and to get women's sports recognized at the international level. While Pierre de Coubertin was complaining that women should be relegated to cheering from the stands and stop trying to get involved, Elise and her colleagues were launching the first multi-country women's soccer matches between France and England. And then, an event in Monte Carlo in 1921,
39:12 Holly Frey? in which women from France, England, Italy, Norway, and Sweden participated. And then, Elise started planning something bigger: a Women's Olympics. In the autumn of 1921, she founded the Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale, that is also abbreviated generally as FSFI.
39:34 Holly Frey? There had been back and forth over the years as advocates made their cases to Olympic organizers to have women included in more sports, and they had been met with no cooperation. So they decided to just plan their own similar events. And the first of these games, called the Jeux Olympians Feminis, was held in Paris in 1922. This was only a single day with 11 track and field events and a crowd of 20,000 people watched. The games opened with Elise announcing over a loudspeaker, quote, "I declare open the first women's Olympic Games in the world." Unsurprisingly, this event was not met with enthusiasm from the International Olympic Committee.
40:18 Holly Frey? There was a feeling that the whole thing was feminist propaganda and that the governing body of the Olympics, that's the International Amateur Athletic Federation, that's IAAF, should just take it over. This led to so much arguing and then negotiating back and forth. And it was not only these two entities that were vying for control of the situation. A couple of things came out of the negotiations after two years of contentious meetings. Milja's FSFI could continue to have its own games, but it could not use the word "Olympic" or any variation of it in the name. The FSFI agreed to the general rules of international competition that the IAAF had developed,
41:00 Holly Frey? but they were still unable to modify those rules at the event level. As negotiations continued, in 1926, Milja's organization held the second international Ladies' Games in Sweden. It's also been called the Women's World Games. And the IOC made an offer to try to appease Milja and her team and get their competing events to stop. They said they would add women's track and field events to the 1928 Games. Initially, this seemed like a win, but then the IAAF retracted the promise of a full schedule of events and agreed to only five events on an experimental basis.
41:42 Holly Frey? Elise was furious and wanted to shut the negotiations down completely, but the larger group at FSFI saw this as still being a win, and they voted to accept the IOC's plan. One country, which was England, was as irate as Meat was about it, so much so that they boycotted the Games entirely. Yeah, that was actually a big deal because they were favored to win that year, so they were basically walking away from their opportunity. Meanwhile, the Women's World Games continued with the 1930 Games being held in Prague, and that was also a success. 15,000 spectators came out to watch women from 17 countries compete.
42:25 Holly Frey? In 1934, another Women's World Games was held in London, and throughout all of this time that these Games were going on, the FSFI was pressuring the IAAF to fully integrate the Olympics with women. But things seemed to be going backwards. There were fewer women allowed in the various Games and fewer events that they could participate in, and so the bickering between these two entities continued. In 1935, a very frustrated Milja asked the IOC to just exclude women completely so that they could just go do their own thing and not have to negotiate with an organization that clearly did not want any kind of cooperation. This letter that she wrote asking them to say, "Fine, just write us out completely",
43:10 Holly Frey? was incendiary, which she knew it would be, and it set off another round of tense negotiating. But this resulted in the Olympic Committee and the IAAF agreeing to a complete program of women's sports in the Games, and the recognition of world records that had been set at the Women's Games, which was another sticking point. While another women's games had been planned for 1938 in Vienna, the IAAF insisted that if everybody agreed to these terms, that those games could not happen. And this was the agreement that was finally struck. Through grit, perseverance, and a willingness to toe up to the largest athletic organizations in the world, Elise Millia had led the charge to get women's sports fully integrated into the Olympics.
43:55 Holly Frey? Millia had spent the years fighting this fight, doing so not just in meetings with athletics committees. She had also been very publicly touting the importance of equality in sports. She wrote numerous articles for various magazines and newspapers about why it was not at all scandalous for a woman to be an athlete. She was very frank in sharing her frustrations over having to fight so hard for the right to play sports. Millia represents the push in France and the world in the early 20th century for women to have opportunities in sports, but also for women to have more social and political equality. She recognized that the two were inextricably connected.
44:39 Holly Frey? And in 1934, she told an interviewer for Independent Woman, quote, "Women's sports of all kinds are handicapped in my country by the lack of playing space. As we have no vote, we cannot make our needs publicly felt or bring pressure to bear in the right quarters. I always tell my girls that the vote is one of the things they will have to work for if France is to keep its place with the other nations in the realm of feminine sport." And after all of this work and finally getting the Olympics integrated, Elise opted to step out of the spotlight and mostly retired as the mouthpiece for women in sports. She continued to live in Paris until her death on May 19, 1957.
45:25 Holly Frey? Although she was characterized very negatively by a lot of people in her lifetime, Elise has come to be seen as a trailblazer and a vital force for women's athletics. In 2016, the Elise Millia Association was formed with the mission that it, quote, "advocates for gender equality in sport, promotes better representation of female athletes, coaches, and leaders, values diversity, and fights against all forms of discrimination and violence, both on and off the field of sports." At the 2024 Olympic Games in France, an actor was present throughout the Games dressed as Elise. And there was also a plaza at the Olympic Village that was named for her. If you watch the opening ceremony, which I know not everybody loved, I thought it was spectacular,
46:11 Holly Frey? and you recall the 10 gold statues of women that appeared along the Seine during the festivities, one of those was Elise. Those statues actually went into storage for a while. But then in June of 2025, they were installed along the Rue de la Chapelle in the 18th arrondissement as a permanent public exhibit.
46:32 Holly Frey? And those are some women that made it possible for women to be involved in sports. Yeah. Do you also have some listener mail? I do. This listener mail is from our listener Miranda. It is in response to our embroidery podcast, specifically embroidery part one. Without knowing it, Miranda references something that comes up, I think in part two, writing, "Dear Holly and Tracy, imagine my amusement when I started the latest podcast without really looking at its subject while I worked on my latest cross stitch. I started cackling. I love the various dives into handicrafts, especially textile and fiber arts in the last year or so with paper patterns and now embroidery. It's nice to see them get the same kind of attention as other art."
47:17 Holly Frey? Listen, we know I love these arts. For anyone who might be getting into the hobby, DMC has free cross stitch and embroidery patterns on their website that you can filter by difficulty. I also use AntiquePatternLibrary.org for vintage and antique patterns. That's very cool. I didn't know about that one. And we talked about DMC, I think, in the second part of that, that two parter. So they got a shout out. As pet tax, I'm including my 11 year old lady Scotty, or Scatty. I'm not sure how it's pronounced. She's a calico, very deliberately not looking at the cheese she wanted to steal, and my one year old Apollo 13, the void who looks like an Edward Gorey drawing of a cat.
47:57 Holly Frey? These babies are so sweet. Listen, I have a cat. I am normally a don't feed cats any food off your plate person, but we have one who is a sweet, gentle little lady, and I can't resist sneaking her a little snack now and again. And we all love voids. We know that. Also, because this email mentions Edward Gorey, there are only a few days left. If you're listening to this episode, the day it comes out. But if you are in Manhattan, the Society of Illustrators has a lovely Edward Gorey exhibit going on. I highly recommend it, like pieces from his entire career and life, and it's amazing. These two kitties are so cute and should get all of the cheese and all of
48:41 Holly Frey? the kisses. And man, Apollo 13 is really an extra gorgeous black cat. He looks like a little panther baby. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for this. Listen, I want to talk about handicrafts all the time. Let's talk about sewing forever. I'll do it. But if you would like to write to us and share your projects, or your pictures of your pets, or anything else you want, or you don't want to send a picture, that's cool, too. You can do that at [email protected] . You can also listen to the podcast on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows and subscribe there.
49:24 Holly Frey? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
49:38 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether you're calling the wise women in your life, video calling your girlfriends across the country, or checking in on someone who always knows how to make you smile, staying connected matters. Those small conversations, shared laughs, and quick hellos are what
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50:47 Holly Frey? Live Right, publishers of John U. Bacon's New York Times bestseller, The Gales of November, a chronicle of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's 1975 shipwreck. Never has it been told better than by Mr. Bacon in this colorful book, writes John J. Miller of The Wall Street Journal, while author Hampton Sides proclaims that it's destined to be a classic. The Gales of November, now in paperback.
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