A Tribute to Fanny Blankers-Koen
I was reminded yesterday that it was on 29th July 1948 that the Olympic Games began in London after a gap of 12 years since the previous Olympics owing to the Second World War. That gives me the excuse to do a little post in tribute to one of the greatest athletes of all time.
The London games saw the emergence of legendary Dutch athlete Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won no less than four gold medals: 100m, 200m, 80m hurdles and 4 ×100m relay. She probably would have won the Long Jump too, as she held the World Record in that event at the time, but was only allowed to compete in four events. Her achievements are made all the more remarkable by the fact that she was 30 years old – an age many would have thought was past the prime for an athlete – and she was also the mother of two children.
Fanny Blankers-Koen became a household name to my parents’ generation, and the inspiration to countless aspiring athletes. I remember my Mum talking about her when I was little, and what I remember from that is that she was regarded as exceptionally tall – in fact she was 5′ 9″ – which helped reinforce the impression among many British people that Dutch people were all giants!
Anyway, here is a little video with some clips of her in action. She won the 200m by miles!
Fanny Blankers-Koen passed away in 2004, at the age of 85, but her legend will live on.
Follow @telescoper
In the Dark 
July 30, 2018 at 4:50 pm
5’9″ would still put her in the tallest 5% of women in the UK nowadays. I think a diet with lots of calcium in it probably does promote bone growth. I’m not sure about physiognomy, though. I’m not sure I could recognize a Dutch person from facial features or expressions very easily, When they speak it’s trivial of course!
July 30, 2018 at 7:51 pm
There is verse in Dante’s divine comedy about someone being as tall as ‘three frisian together’. The commented version stated that referred to the believe that the Frisians were the tallest people in the world. In the Netherlands, there is still a gradation with people in the north (where the Frisians live) being taller than in the south.
July 30, 2018 at 9:14 pm
The Frisian language is very close to English, n’est-ce pas?
July 31, 2018 at 2:24 pm
I was thinking of
“Brea, bûter en griene tsiis is goed Ingelsk en goed Frysk”
July 31, 2018 at 3:21 pm
The frisian language has evolved a lot but originally was a scandinavian relative, I think. You can still recognize in some words that it was closer to english than it was to dutch (for instance, ‘key’ is ‘kaai’ in frisian, while the dutch word is ‘sleutel’ is close to the schluessel in german. The ‘ch’ sound in english (cheese, church) comes back in frisian but not in dutch). There were attempts to get rid of the language earlier in the 20th century, as happened to many minority languages in Europe. There were language riots in Frisia in the 1950’s after someone was imprisoned for speaking frisian in court. It was allowed to be taught in local schools only in the 1970’s. I think Germany went a bit further in attempts to eradicate the language and culture. There used to be a fair amount of discrimination against frisians in the Netherlands, arising just from the attitude of people. The main north-south railway connection still carefully goes around Frisia.
July 31, 2018 at 7:37 am
Dutch women are tall, but saying 5′ 9″ is short is an exaggeration. The average height of young Dutch women in various recent studies is about 5′ 7″.