Double National Round, Women

Lottie Dod took the lead on the first day with a score of 348 points and 66 hits, with Queenie Newall trailing, scoring 338 despite hitting the same number of targets. Nobody else was really close. On Saturday, the 18th, Queenie Newall scored well, leading the archers that day with 350 points but by a slim margin, as Beatrice Hill-Lowe was 2nd on the day with 343. Lottie Dod collapsed completely on the second day, scoring only 294, which trailed five other archers.

Sybil Fenton “Queenie” Newall’s victory still allows her the claim of being the oldest woman to win an Olympic medal or gold medal - she was 4 months short of her 54th birthday during the archery event. Newall won the British championship in archery in both 1911 and 1912 but she was far from the top female shooter of the era. That honor falls to Alice Legh, the greatest British archer ever, who won 23 national championships between 1886 and 1922. Legh elected not to compete at the Olympic event, which she almost certainly would have won. The following week at Oxford, she defeated Newall by 151 points.

The runner-up, Lottie Dod, who was the sister of the men’s 1908 Olympic champion William Dod, never won a British title in archery. But she is certainly the greatest all-around British sportswoman. She remains the youngest ever champion at Wimbledon, having won the ladies’ singles in 1887 aged only 15. It was her first of five Wimbledon singles’ titles, but she retired from tennis in 1893 and turned to other sports. She played hockey (field) for England in 1899-1900 and in golf, won the British Ladies’ Amateur Championship in 1904, after reaching the semi-finals in 1898 and 1899.