800 metres, Women

At the 1922 and 1926 FSFI Women’s World Games, women ran the 1,000 metres, won by Lucie Bréard (FRA) in 1922 in 3:12.0, and by Edith Trickey (GBR) in 1926 in 3:08.8. The 1928 Olympic programme added the 800 metres for women, the only race they had longer than 100 metres. Germany’s Lina Radke-Batschauer set the world record of 2:23.8 in 1927, only to see it broken by Sweden’s Inga Gentzel in June 1928. However, shortly before the Olympics, Radke-Batschauer ran 2:16.8 to take back the world record.

In the final at Amsterdam, Gentzel took the lead at 200 metres, and led after the first lap in 64.2 seconds. But Radke-Batschauer took over at the beginning of the final backstretch and led to the finish, with Kinue Hitomi of Japan getting the silver medal and Gentzel holding on for the bronze. Several of the women competitors were quite tired at the end of the race, not unlike many of the men at the end of 800 metres. But the sight of women so exhausted, some lying on the track, offended many of the sports officials of the time. Descriptions of the event by the women competitors, in later years, state that this did not actually occur. However, eventually the officials decided that women should not run such long distances, and no women’s event longer than 200 metres would be contested in an Olympics again until 1960. Hitomi would return to the FSFI Women’s World Games in 1930 and win four gold medals, but she died in 1931 from tuberculosis.