The Forgotten Olympian

Betty Robinson’s claim to fame is that she won the very first Olympic gold medal in women’s track and field. Instead, if she’s remembered, it’s more likely that she’s known for a case of “mistaken mortality.” But first, let’s talk about that gold medal.

In 1928, Charles Price, a science teacher at Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Illinois, boarded a train after work. Just before the train pulled out of the station, he observed a young woman racing to catch the train, and he noted that she was very fast, but not fast enough. Imagine his surprise when, a minute or two later, that same young woman sat down next to him on the train. Here’s where serendipity/fate/coincidence made its appearance: Charles Price was a track coach at the high school, and the young woman who almost missed the train was 16-year-old Elizabeth “Betty” Robinson, a student at the same school.

Although there was no girls’ track team at the Thornton Township High, Price offered to time Betty as she ran 50 yards down a high school hallway. Fast forward a week or two. At her first official track meet, she finished second to the U.S. 100-meter record-holder. She tied the world record in her second meet, and at her third meet, Betty Robinson had qualified for the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam. The next week, she was sailing to Amsterdam, working out with her teammates on a quarter-mile linoleum track around the deck of the ship.

Before 1928, women could swim or compete at archery, but there were no track and field events for them. Until 1928. That’s when Betty Robinson won the first Olympic 100-meter-dash for women, after nearly missing the race because she had accidentally packed two left running shoes. (Someone got the correct shoes to her just before the race started.) Here’s the video of that race.

Fifty-six years after winning her first medal, she told the Los Angeles Times, “I had no idea that women even ran then. I grew up a hick. That is when I found out that they actually had track meets for women.” When Betty won her gold medal in 1928 (she also won a silver medal in the 4x100m), there was very little organized women’s track and field at the national level, but Betty laid down a plan–she would win another gold in the 1932 Olympics, and then by the time the 1936 Olympics rolled around, she’d be a coach. Again, fate intervened.

In the summer of 1931, still a world-class athlete, Betty interrupted her training when her cousin Wilson “Wil” Palmer, a recently licensed pilot, offered to take her up in his bi-plane, assuring her that it would be cooler up in the clouds. At an altitude between 400 and 600 feet, the plane suddenly stalled and went into a nosedive just outside of Chicago. Wil and Betty were found in the wreckage. Wil’s legs were crushed, eventually resulting in amputation. Betty was so badly injured that she was presumed dead by the man who found her. In fact, he loaded her into the trunk of his car and took her to an undertaker, rather than to a hospital; fortunately, the undertaker noticed that Betty was still breathing. One of her legs was twisted and broken in three places, her left arm had been shattered, and she had a deep gash over her right eye. The doctors who treated her thought that she probably wouldn’t walk again, and she would definitely be unable to run. But Betty staged quite a comeback.

After spending eleven weeks in and out of consciousness in the hospital, Betty was released with pins in her leg and one leg ½ inch shorter than the other. Determined to both walk and run again, she began her rehab. She missed the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, but she was ready—almost—for the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Since she still couldn’t bend her knee, she was unable to get into the crouch that sprinters assume at the start of a race. No problem. Betty would run on the relay team. As long as she wasn’t the first runner, she wouldn’t have to crouch. Betty was the third runner on the U.S. team.

The German team was heavily favored to win, but in a fortuitous accident for the American team, Germany’s anchor runner dropped the baton when she shifted it from one hand to the other. The U.S. team raced by and Betty Robinson won her second gold medal. This video clip shows the German runner dropping the baton as well as the U.S. runner crossing the finish line. The U.S. relay team returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York, riding in the car behind Jesse Owens, who had won four gold medals in Berlin.

If you research historical events of 1928, you’ll be reminded that Amelia Earhart was the first female to make a trans-Atlantic flight and that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin and that Mickey Mouse appeared in Steamboat Willie. Now you can add one more noteworthy American name to your cache of historical facts: Elizabeth “Betty” Robinson—who is still the youngest 100-meter champion in Olympic history—won the gold medal in the first-ever women’s track and field event. And exactly what did Robinson do after she won her first medal? “When the flag went up after the race, I started crying like a baby,” she said.

It would never have occurred to Betty Robinson to take a knee or turn away from the American flag. She was a true American athlete.

Epilogue: Betty Robinson’s career included world records at 50, 60, 70, and 100 yards. In 1939, she married Richard Schwartz and they had two children. After she stopped running, she was a coach and a public speaker, and she was inducted into both the National Track and Field Hall of Fame as well as the Helms Hall of Fame. In 1996, she carried the Olympic torch for the Atlanta Olympic Games. Elizabeth Robinson Schwartz died in 1999 at the age of 87.