Francina Elsje Koen life and biography

Fanny Blankers-Koen (also known as: Fanny Koen, Francina Elsje Koen, Francina Elsje Blankers-Koen), born April 26, 1918 in Amsterdam, Netherlands - died January 25, 2004 in Amsterdam, Netherlands was a Dutch athlete.

Born in Amsterdam in 1918 as Francina Elsje Koen, the daughter of a government inspector, "Fanny" Blankers-Koen was known as "the first Queen of women's Olympics" and "the most famous female athlete of all time."

Early Talent Forced to Wait

Blankers-Koen made her debut at age 18 in the Berlin Olympics in 1936, where she finished in a tie for sixth in the high jump and fifth in the 4 ( 100 meter relay. She clearly had promise and talent, but it would have to wait. Her career was first stalled by World War II and the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands; the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were canceled because of World War II, so no one could compete. And when she married her coach, Jan Blankers, and had two children, everyone believed her track and field career was over. After the war, however, she quickly began competing again, and reestablished herself as a talented athlete.

By the time the 1948 Olympic Games convened in London, she was the world record holder in the 100 meter race, the hurdles, the high jump, and the long jump. She was also 30 years old and the mother of two children, and people said that her age and motherhood would slow her down. That kind of talk, she said, "was just the thing to rouse me."

No one has collected statistics on how having children affects a woman's performance in sports and how many mothers have competed in the Olympics, but it is generally believed that Fanny Blankers-Koen is the only woman in Olympic track history to have won a gold medal after having more than one child, and the only woman with more than one child even to have been on an Olympic track-and-field team.

London Olympics, 1948

In London, Blankers-Koen competed 11 times in eight daysÄrunning heats to get into the final races, as well as the final racesÄand won every time. She won the 100 meters by three yards on a wet track in 11.9 seconds. The next day, she had a bad start in the 80-meter hurdles and caught up with the leader, 19-year-old Maureen Gardner of Great Britain, halfway through the race. Just as Blankers-Koen was about the take the lead, the hit a hurdle and staggered, as she said, "like a drunkard." The finish was so close that she didn't know she had won, and when the Olympic band began playing "God Save the King" she believed Gardner had won. But the band was only playing because King George VI had entered the stadium, and immediately afterward they played the Dutch national anthem to honor her. She and Gardner had both run the race in the world record time of 11.2 seconds, but she had been declared the winner.

The tension of that race got to her, and just before she was scheduled to run the semifinal in the 200 meters, she was crying in the locker room, ready to drop out. She was exhausted and felt the pressure to win. She disliked the 200-meter race, an event that was being run by women for the first time in the Olympics, and she also missed her children, Jan and Fanny. "I was having such a bad time," she said later. "I wanted to go back home to my children." Her husband Jan told her, "If you don't want to run, it's all right. But I'm afraid you'll be sorry afterward."

Blankers-Koen realized that all her life, all she had ever wanted was to be the best. She decided to run.

She won the semifinal in the Olympic record time of 24.3 seconds, and then, on another wet track, won the final by 7 yards, in 24.4 seconds. She won her fourth gold medal in five days of running when she ran the anchor leg of the 4 ( 100 relay for the Dutch team.

Although she was the world record holder in the high jump and long jump, she didn't compete in these events. "I didn't like the high jump," she said, "and the long jump almost coincided with a hurdles heat, and I preferred one gold medal to two silvers."

After Her Olympic Wins

After her Olympic victories, people compared her to the African-American athlete Jesse Owens, who had stunned the Nazis by winning gold medals in four track events in Berlin in 1936. When she returned to Amsterdam, her country treated her to a huge parade. Blankers-Koen, who rode next to her husband in an open coach pulled by four white horses, was amazed by all the excitement, and kept saying, "All I did was win some foot races."

Blankers-Koen wanted to compete in the 1952 Olympics but withdrew because of a skin condition. She coached others and was the manager of the Dutch team at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City.

During her almost-twenty-year career in sports, Blankers-Koen set 20 world records in seven events ranging from sprints to hurdles, long jump, high jump, and the pentathlon. In her eighties, she still enjoys good health and athletic vigor, and plays tennis almost every day.

January 25, 2004: Blankers-Koen died on January 25, 2004, in Amsterdam, Netherlands, at the age of 85. She suffered heart problems and Alzheimer's disease.

AWARDS

Gold medals in 100m, 200m, 800m hurdles, and 4 ( 100 relay, Olympic Games, 1948; Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year, 1948; International Women's Sports Hall of Fame.

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