javelin

The Incredible Babe Didrikson-Zaharias Part 1: The First Female Super Athlete

babe-didrikson-javelin-1932
Mildred “Babe” Didrikson at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics

Role models are essential, particularly to groups under-represented.

In the first half of the 20th century, women around the industrialized world were told that exerting themselves too much in sports would not only be unlady-like, it might be bad for their health.

In America, one woman refuted those assumptions, brashly.

Babe Didrikson was the female version of Jim Thorpe. Whatever sport she took up, she did very well, often better than most others, female or male. She was an exceptional diver, bowler, baseball player and roller skater. Out of high school, she was the star on the Employers’ Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas women’s basketball team.

At the national track and field championships in 1932, the one that would determine participation in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics, Didrikson won an amazing six events – the broad jump, the shot put, the javelin, the 80-meter hurdles, the baseball throw, as well as tying for first in the high jump – all in a three-hour period. Her individual total points of 30 was greater than the next best team score of 22 points, accumulated by 22 athletes.

babe-didrikson-hurdles-1932

At the 1932 Olympics, Didrikson would win two gold medals and a silver and become one of the sensations of the Los Angeles Games.

And she was just getting started.

Packing star power, Didrikson was able to get paid in ways that other female athletes could only dream of: singing and playing the harmonica on vaudeville, doing so while hitting plastic golf balls into the delirious audience…making thousands of dollars per month, a king’s ransom in those days.

In 1934, Didrikson began to play golf seriously, and went on to become the best female golfer in the world, wining 82 golf tournaments as an amateur and a professional. For one stretch in 1946 and 1947, she won 14 straight gold tournaments. Her influence was so great that she co-founded the LPGA – the Ladies Professional Golf Association.

But she was a pioneer, so she had to do so under challenging conditions. People around her and the press in particular would call her gender in to question, openly telling her to stay home. “It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring,” one sports columnist wrote in the New York World-Telegram.

What is surprising, according to this New York Times article, is that the great Mildred “Babe” Didrikson, who was named “Woman Athlete of the Half Century” in 1950, is little known today, her museum in Beaumont, Texas, rarely visited.

While girls who like sports today have a growing number of female role models in the 21st century, one of the greatest took the world by storm some 70 to 80 years ago. And this Babe is worth a look.

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No Coach, No Problem: Silver Medalist Javelin Thrower Julius Yego and The YouTube Generation

Julius Yego and his only Javelin Throw
Yego’s first and only throw at the Rio Olympics

 

He had won gold in the 2015 Beijing World Championships, so YouTube Man was expected to compete for gold in Rio.

His first throw was strong 88.24 meters. But quite unexpectedly, that would be Julius Yego’s last throw. While it is still unclear what happened, Yego severely injured his ankle and was carted off in tears. Instead of attempting to throw over 90 meters, which he did in Beijing, the Kenyan had to watch from the stands as German Thomas Rohler managed a throw of 90.3 meters. Still, amazingly, his first throw was good enough for silver.

One could only imagine the pain of inactivity was greater than the pain in the ankle. Yego promised he would be back though. “It was that painful, but I thank God it not serious as I thought! I am going to be back stronger guys, love you all my fans wherever you are. Your tremendous support can never go unnoticed! You always cheer me up even in hard times! God bless you all.“

Yego was a favorite to win gold, which is amazing if you consider his story – a teenager from a farmer’s family who liked throwing a javelin so much he learned how to do it on the internet.

Way back in 2000, Thomas Friedman wrote the seminal book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. He posited that globalization, particularly the pace of global commerce was occurring due to three factors: the democratization of technology, the democratization of finance and the democratization of information.

In reference to the last factor, the democratization of information, Friedman swooned at the thought of a future pioneered by the likes of Netscape, and its gateway browser to the internet, and the promise of high-speed broadband. “Never before in the history of the world have so many people been able to learn about so many other people’s lives, products and ideas,” wrote Friedman.

Only a few years after Friedman published that book, a school boy named Julius Yego of Kenya got hooked on the javelin throw watching his fellow primary school students send their wooden javelins flying, and was inspired by his brother who was pretty good at the discipline.

But he did not have the resources, nor were there any coaches at his school. In 2009, believing he had a chance to become a world-class thrower, he was frustrated that he could not get the help he needed. That’s when he turned to YouTube. “Nobody was there for me to see if I was doing well or not, so I went to the cybercafe,” he told CNN.

He would watch champions Jan Zelezny and Andreas Thorkidsen, examining their technique, and learning the right ways to train to thrown a two-and-a-half meter spear nearly the length of a football pitch.

In 2010, the self-taught Yego won bronze at his first international tournament at the African Championships in Nairobi, throwing the javelin 74.51 meters. Finally gaining visibility, Yego got some support, earning a scholarship to train in Finland for two weeks in the cold of winter of 2011. There he met leading javelin coach, Petteri Piironen, who saw potential in Yego, who was then reaching distances of around 78 meters. Yego visited Piironen again for three months in the run-up to the London Games, where he finished 12th.

Petteri Piironen and Julius Yego
Petteri Piironen and Julius Yego

While he continues to seek advice from Piironen, Yego continued to self coach, and also to progress, winning championships at The Commonwealth Games, African Championships in 2014, and the World Championships in 2015.

In a CNN interview, the javelin world champion recalled in 2011, when he found success at the All Africa Games, “people wanted to talk to his coach, to know what I did before the competitions, the championships. By then seriously I didn’t have a coach. I didn’t go with a coach. They asked me, ‘Who is your coach,’ and then I told them, ‘YouTube’.”

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The Javelin Hotbed of Scandinavia

There is something visceral about the javelin throw. After all, it was one of the few Olympic events that harken back to ancient military weaponry.

There is also something quirky about the javelin throw. In this wikiHow page on how to throw a javelin, you can see that a javelin thrower runs with his body facing sideways and the upper half of the body learning away from the direction the athlete wants to throw.

javelin form
Javelin throwing form

But for whatever reason, the best javelin throwers have hailed from the Scandinavian nations of Finland, Norway and Sweden. In fact, out of a total of 72 javelin Olympic medalists since 1908, 32 or 44% have gone to throwers from Scandinavia. The site Peak Performance makes an attempt to provide reasons for Finland’s dominance.

Theory #1 is that the javelin throw was Finland’s everyman’s sport, according to the same site.

Sociology emeritus professor Paavo Seppanen has been following sport closely for more than 60 years. In his view, the javelin throw is a model of an individual pursuit which doesn’t need much equipment or facilities. “In the countryside, any small boy could make a rudimentary birch or alder javelin and throw it in any open field. Throwing things – along with lifting stones, putting shots, wrestling arms, climbing trees, etc – has always been part of Finnish physical exercise tradition.”

Theory #2 is the cold dark climate of the area. In this case, the writer refers to Finland.

“The Finns have been moulded psychologically by the extremes of their climate,” says [Chris] Turner (British journalist). “Long dark winters and short glorious summers have produced the archetypal strong but silent national character. The javelin suits the Finns, providing an emotional release for all their pent-up feelings. It’s the dual release of spear and emotion which the Finns so much enjoy.”

Theory #3 is a corollary on Theory #2, in that the reserved nature of the Finns provides a firm launching pad for explosive throws.

The site quotes 1964 Olympic champion, Pauli Nevala.

According to 1964 Olympic Champion Pauli Nevala’s amusing definition, “what a great javelin thrower needs is a combination of egocentrism, guts bordering stupidity, plus lots of ambition and limitless greed to succeed – all of which happen to be scorned by our society!”

Whatever the reason, the Scandinavian hotbed is still hot! Of the nine javelin medalists in the past three Summer Games, four have been from Norway and Finland.

Finnish Javelin Legends
The photograph of Jonni Myyr… (the winner), flanked by his countrymen Urho Peltonen, Paavo Johansson-Jaale and Julius Saaristo, remains one of the defining moments of Finnish sport.
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Who is that Bald-Headed Beauty: The Mystery of the Soviet Javelin Champion

Elvira Ozolina
Elvira Ozolina

She was the best, holding the world record in the women’s javelin throw from May 1960 to October 1964. Elvira Ozolina, the native Latvian who was representing the Soviet Union at the 1964 Olympics, was primed to repeat as Olympic champion in Tokyo, after taking gold in Rome in 1960.

However, you have to play the game as they say. And when the competition ensued, Romanian Mihaela Penes threw nearly 7 meters better than Ozolina to win the gold medal. Ozolina threw poorly, and the Rome Champion landed in fifth place.

Then the rumors began to swirl. The US wire services filled newspapers across the country with this story from AP.

Various headlines from AP news wire stories on Ozolina
Various headlines from AP news wire stories on Ozolina

“There’s a bald-headed beauty who speaks Russian roaming the Olympic Village today. And a new Olympic mystery is swirling around her. Less than 24 hours ago the girl had beautiful, shoulder-length chestnut hair. Then she walked into a Village beauty parlor and ordered it shaved off. She walked out 20 minutes later, tears streaming down her face and her head bald as a billiard ball.”

The press suspected that it was Ozolina, but the Russian officials and press so strongly denied the report that the mystery remained a mystery. In fact, Ozolina appeared in a press conference a few days later. The AP report, without directly saying so, hints that Ozolina was now wearing a wig, but Ozolina waved the idea off. When asked why she cut her hair off, she said “Cut my hair off? Take a good look at my head.”

So did she, or didn’t she? As they say, only her hairdresser knows for sure.

Hair Salon in Olympic Village, from the book
Hair Salon in Olympic Village, from the book “Tokyo Olympiad 1964_Kyodo News Agency”
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