200 metres Breaststroke, Women

While American contestants had vied for and, more often than not, won medals in the other events in the programme, the women’s breaststroke uniquely saw nobody from the US team reach even the semi-final.

The favorite for the gold was the 22 year old Dutchwoman Nel van Vliet, who had not even learned to swim until the age of 16. Although she was the world record holder, her path to the represent the Netherlands in international competition was not smooth. Her father had not registered her birth, and a passport could not be obtained until he appeared in court and paid a fine. Van Vliet broke the Olympic record in her heat, but the two Hungarians, Éva Székely and Éva Novák, were also in fine form, as was the Australian schoolgirl Nancy Lyons.

Éva Székely set the pace in the final, but her butterfly technique soon faltered, and the duo of van Vliet and Novák moved away from the rest of the field. The race developed into a duel between the two, and it was not until the final length that van Vliet moved clear of her rival. In third place at the start of the final 50m was Lyons. She had already moved through from fifth, to fourth, to third, and now she would make a last desperate to catch the leaders. Moving past a tiring Novák, she surged onwards and, at the end of the race, was only a half second behind the winner van Vliet.

Shortly after returning home, van Vliet’s medal was stolen from her parent’s home. It was only in 2004 that she was awarded a replacement medal by Dutch IOC member Erica Terpstra, herself an Olympic swimmer.