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GOLDEN GIRLSThe History of Women's Athletics in AustraliaIntroductionIn 1976, I developed an interest in the sport of athletics. It was the year of the Montreal Olympics and the performance of Australia's athletes at these Games was generally disappointing, for a variety of reasons. Australia was still considered to be a minor power in the sport of athletics, mainly due to the legendary performances of athletes such as Herb Elliott, Ron Clarke, Betty Cuthbert, Marjorie Jackson, Shirley Strickland, Pam Kilborn, Ralph Doubell and Maureen Caird in previous years. I can recall being amazed by the stories of such athletes and recall, fondly, portions of the television series 'The Olympiad' highlighting their performances. As a result of my growing interest in athletics, I began to research the history of the sport in Australia. Although the basic history and biographies of Australia's star athletes were generally available, I found them lacking in detail. Where I had considered an official history of athletics (such as Nell Gould's "History of the Amateur Women's Amateur Athletics Union of Australia) to be quite comprehensive, I later discovered that there was a great deal of incorrect information to be found within such official histories. The area of statistics was also one I developed an interest in. At the time, ranking lists for Australian (or world) athletes were not of the high quality enjoyed today. This was no fault of the responsible statistician; slow communications meant that many eligible performances were unavoidably omitted from ranking lists and early publishing deadlines for magazines, such as Australasian Athletics, meant that lists were always well out of date by the time the public was able to access them. I resolved to start compiling my own list of results and national records and have continued to do so to date. In addition, I developed my own lists detailing the chronology of Australian records for all men's and women's events and a list of previous championship performances. Throughout my research into Australian athletics, I was continually impressed by the over-performance of Australia's women athletes since the inception of international events for females. The achievements of Cuthbert, Strickland and Jackson, Boyle, Kilborn, Caird and many others had served to establish Australia's reputation as an over-achiever in women's athletics. Over the years, my interest in the women's branch of the sport increased as I began to 'discover' a range of information and performances that had been forgotten or overlooked. Prior to the 'Golden Era' of the 1950s, ranking lists and performance details for Australian women athletes were rarely available and, to compare performances with those of contemporary athletes, I began to retrospectively compile lists ranking the early stars of women's athletics. I did this on a casual basis; when time allowed I would conduct research in various state or national libraries and the amount of data I recorded gradually grew. At first my research was concentrated around athletics from 1926. Nell Gould's official history had stated that women's athletics in Australia only began in that year, leading up to the 1928 Olympics, and I had been led to believe that there was little or no competition for female athletes in Australia prior to this time. Correspondence with ATFS Statistician and author, Eric L. Cowe, in the early 1990s served to ignite my interest in researching evidence of earlier performances. We collaborated in discovering details for the sprinter Holly Mace who, in 1914, equalled the world's best time for 100y (12.0) running in an official amateur women's competition in Sydney and shared a range of other information about early athletics in Australia. Further research brought to my attention the feats of Loyal Forward who, in 1906, won the first 'state championship' race for women in Australia, run as part of a professional carnival in Kalgoorlie. Other professional challenges for the title of Australia's fastest woman runner served to stimulate the growth of women's athletics in Australia over the following years. The stories of pioneer women such as Ivy Evans, Muriel Eacott and Bessie Grandemange make interesting reading for anyone interested in the history of sport in Australia. The history of women's athletics in Australia would not be complete without reference to these early 'stars'. As the official histories of athletics in Australia omitted any detail of this era, I decided to publish my own (edited) history of women's athletics in Australia, on the internet, in the mid 1990s. In 1998, a portion of my history was published in the Oceanian IAAF Bulletin, honouring the International Amateur Athletics Federation's 'Year of Women In Athletics'. Since then I have gradually revised this edit to the version now available on this site. I hope you enjoy reading 'Golden Girls'. Graham Thomas CREDITS - A number of performances reported by Eric Cowe feature in this history and I owe him a debt of gratitude for providing both information and inspiration over the last decade. Thanks Eric! Eric has published a number of works about international athletics. Enquiries about these can be made by emailing him in the UK. The works of:
were also of assistance. Fuller credits will be detailed when this work is completed. All photos remain the property of the copyright holder. An unofficial, non-profit, just-for-fun, page but © 1995-2003 by Graham Thomas |
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