In a corner, Avery Brundage swallowed tall glasses of champagne and mingled with German officers. At one point he joined Gretl Braun in toasting her sister Eva and Eva’s lover, Adolf Hitler.
—
Not everyone was happy with Helen’s win. As she awoke the following morning, she learned that she had become the talk of Berlin, as a rumor put forth by the Polish Federation began to circulate contending that Helen was not being truthful about her identity: she was a man and she won the competition while masquerading as a woman. Shocked, she did her best to deny the accusations. But the Polish Federation went on to allude to such a possibility not only to the press but to the IOC, going so far as to lodge a complaint with the organization.
The insinuation stung; Helen couldn’t even breathe. She knew she was not beautiful, had never thought of herself as such, but being compared to a man was mortifying. The accusations followed the logic that no one that tall, with a stride that long, nearly six feet, with a form so graceless, could be anything other than a man.
The press gobbled up the gossip and regurgitated it for readers around the world to feast on. Looking at Helen, they reported, there had been clues scattered throughout her life: her career, a repository of masculine gestures, postures, and attitudes no one had dared to mention before. Just look at the size of her hands and feet, they suggested. To some readers, the arguments smelled suspiciously like the ones Paul Gallico had flung against Babe Didrikson four years earlier, during the Los Angeles Olympics.
The support Helen received from her teammates and other Olympic officials did little to dispel the fabrication. The Associated Press got in on the act, as did the New York Mirror, alleging that Stella had started the rumor by speaking to the officials of the Polish Federation. Helen’s teammates supported her and tried to amuse her by calling her “Stevie,” but she couldn’t laugh. She knew that such a serious accusation would have to be investigated. To compound Helen’s indignity, the IOC acted swiftly and requested a physical genital examination to confirm her sex.
Helen was aware that some of the athletes were catty, but as she lay on the cold examination table, her legs spread wide apart while an IOC physician prodded her, she realized that this was no longer petty jealousy; it had turned into something more insidious. She looked up at the white ceiling, the lines running across it appearing like creases on a map that she mentally traced, the movement allowing her, at least momentarily, to ignore what was happening below her waist. The experience not only traumatized and humiliated her; it angered her. Still, the results of the exam put an end to the malicious rumors, and her gold was upheld.
—
Keeping an eye from the sidelines was Coach Lawson Robertson, who found the whole ordeal deplorable, not only because of Helen’s dreadful experience but also because of the attention it was taking away from the athletic competitions. “These games are for world champions, not sex appeal,” he said, agreeing that the Greeks had had the right idea when it came to women in the Olympics. “The world’s record established by Helen Stephens, the best woman sprinter, is at least 18 years back of Owens. It makes women in comparison look like children. They are not in the same class with men.”
Helen heard his comments and did not know what angered her most: the intrusive physical exam she had undergone and the questions about her gender and sexuality, or the words of Robertson and the others, denigrating her achievements and those of the other women.
—
The relay race took place the following Monday. It was crucial for all the athletes to know how to execute their roles. Being fast was not enough; there had to be a strategy. Dee knew what each of her runners brought to the team. Looking over the charts, she made her choices based on proven principles: the first athlete had to have terrific speed and be capable of tightly hugging the curve; the second had to possess strong legs and also be adept at surges of momentum in case she needed to come from behind; the third had to have steady control of her speed around the curve, but she also had to be the best out of the four at receiving and passing the baton; and the fourth runner, who would anchor the team, had to be the most reliable and skilled overall.
Helen’s win in the 100 meters made that part of the decision easy: she would anchor the team, running the last leg of the race. Dee also chose Annette Rogers and Betty Robinson as team members, not only because they had prior Olympic experience but also because their qualifying times had earned them a spot.
There was only one spot left, and it could go to either Tidye Pickett or Harriet Bland, the ginger-haired firecracker Helen wasn’t particularly fond of. Harriet and Tidye had both had some success at the Games, but both had suffered disappointment, too, and neither had truly distinguished herself. Back home Harriet had trained under Dee’s guidance and been one of the coach’s favorites, but Helen, for one, hoped Dee would overlook that and instead grant the spot to the athlete who deserved it most.
Tidye had made history earlier in the week. The 80-meter hurdles she had run had been the first time an African American woman had represented the United States at the Olympics. But her glory had ended there; during the qualifiers she had tripped on a hurdle and injured her shoulder, the damage eliminating her from the final race. The team had rallied around her, Betty doing her best to alleviate Tidye’s disappointment by speaking of future opportunities; on the sidelines Harriet smirked.
Based on scores alone, Harriet should not have even been considered. She had been eliminated in the early qualifying for the 100-meter dash, and her overall times were several seconds slower than Tidye’s. But she was healthy if slow. She pleaded her case to Dee, who did what most of the athletes had expected her to do: given their special relationship, Dee handed Harriet the spot that should have been Tidye’s.
Comforting Tidye became Helen’s duty. She was already a winner, she insisted. Participating in the Olympics made her a champion regardless of anything else. But her attempt at consolation missed the mark. “That’s easy for you to say,” Tidye shot back. “You’ve got your medal.”
Betty and Helen were both unhappy with the choice. Betty, in particular, found Harriet’s scheming unbecoming; more than that, she felt Tidye deserved to be on the relay. Helen also supported Tidye, agreeing with the others that Dee had simply given the spot “to her pet.” Unlike Tidye, Harriet had never participated in the Olympics, and they knew the hoopla would unsettle her. She was the slowest and most excitable, and she had an attitude that had garnered her the nickname “the brat.”
But Harriet had become very popular in certain Berlin circles, particularly with the German guards and bureaucrats who insisted on taking her out to see the city or, predictably, on romantic dates. Helen had warned her to be careful, but Harriet rebuffed her; she thought Helen was jealous of her romantic rendezvous. It was not jealousy, Helen persisted, but concern for her and the entire team. What did a girl like Helen know about the excitement of being in a foreign city? Harriet snapped. Truthfully, she didn’t know, either. So, even though the athletes had a curfew, she’d sneak out and spend the night with the Germans, despite Helen’s best efforts.
—
The newly formed relay team quickly made its way to the training grounds. Coaches from the opposing teams were watching to determine their weaker points. Although that was common practice, Dee soon decided to shake things up. Two days prior to the preliminary heats, with the team still tweaking their runs in full view of the German coaches, Dee had them switch positions on every other practice, even adding several members who had not made the team, just to confuse the Germans.
—
The following Monday, the team entered the arena. They were nervous, and physical soreness hampered them. Helen’s legs were still aching, and the previous day Betty had tripped during practice, bruising her hip. She had seen many other athletes knocked out of races after what seemed at first to be innocuous falls; she feared becoming one of them.
Large crowds of German spectators were waving flags and chanting ap
proval as the German team warmed up in the infield. The German team—Emmy Albus, Käthe Krauß, Marie Dollinger, and Ilse Dörffeldt—were the favorites. They had easily won their preliminary heats, beating the Americans with a world-record-setting 46.4 seconds, which topped the previous record of 47.1 seconds. During the preliminaries, the Germans’ baton-passing skills had been flawless, every handoff down to a science: they passed the rod not only smoothly but without slowing down—a feat almost impossible for most teams. The American team’s dejection was already palpable.
—
The morning of the final day, August 9, dawned as all the others had since the athletes had arrived in Berlin: gray and damp despite being early August, the bleak morning foreseeing a bleak ending. The stadium filled quickly, a good portion of the spectators German fans eager to witness their women sweep to another grand victory. Their shouts were deafening, almost maniacal, as the athletes took to the grounds.
As the day wore on, the clouds that had plagued the Games disappeared. A warm sun spread over the fields, the air becoming thick with humidity and buzzing insects. Helen wondered if the light and soothing warmth suddenly greeting them were a precursor of good luck. Betty, too, was in fair humor, although feeling sore. Her much-anticipated return had finally come, and she looked down at her leg, remembering the doctors who had told her that she would never walk again.
As the teams got ready, the women took their places on the track and began to prepare for what would turn out to be the last Olympics any of them would participate in. Betty walked the line, stretching her muscles, her knee stiffening. She tried to untangle the knots in her lower back by running in place. A massage the previous night had done nothing to relieve either her soreness or her nerves. She hadn’t slept well, and the chilliness of their room had only added to the discomfort.
The race was about to begin. Harriet would be first, followed by Annette, Betty on third, and Helen to end it. The cheering crowd stretched toward the track, unnerving the athletes further as they gathered at the starting line. Hitler had also arrived and sat in his box.
Having positioned herself, at the sound of the pistol Harriet flung herself off the starting line, running ahead of Emmy Albus and quickly passing the baton to Annette, with Betty and Helen screaming along with the crowd. Although Harriet had led in the opening moments of the race, the Germans quickly found their groove, flying down the track to snatch the lead. Just behind them, Annette soon reached Betty and sleekly handed her the baton.
Betty held the baton tightly, running down the track with every ounce of effort she could muster; she felt the ground beneath her moving as she ran faster and faster toward Helen. Her arms pumped wildly, and her body leaned forward just slightly as she hugged the curve and bowed to the wind. The spectators could barely feel it, but the runners were facing a headwind and had to adjust, which was just what Betty did. As she rounded the corner, she lifted her head to see Helen waiting for her in the distance.
Helen positioned herself, ready to receive the baton from Betty, as did Ilse Dörffeldt, awaiting the baton coming from Marie Dollinger. Helen’s eyes darted quickly between Betty and Marie. From afar, the two seemed to be running neck and neck, although Marie really held the lead over Betty by several inches. Marie, too, was conscious of her formidable opponent. Although currently in the lead, she was still worried; Betty could, perhaps, propel herself ahead.
But Marie reached her teammate before Betty caught up with Helen and passed the baton to Ilse, whose hand was stretched out as she started running down the track. Helen saw Ilse take off just as Betty handed her the baton. Helen dashed down the track, looking ahead, but from the corner of her eye saw something happen, just as everyone else in the stadium did.
Dee had instructed her runners to keep the baton in the hand in which they take it from the previous runner. The baton is never supposed to be switched from one hand to the other in the middle of a race. Ilse, however, crooked her elbow and brought her arm up, angled the baton across her chest, and tried to switch it to the opposite hand. In so doing, she lost control, dropping it.
It was a critical mistake, one that seemed to happen in slow motion: the baton slipping from her sweaty grasp, falling, and bouncing off the ground; Ilse making a desperate attempt to grab it but unable to do so, for the baton rebounded away from her; the sudden look of despair blanketing her face and twisting her features.
A collective gasp rippled through the stadium. Helen took note of the fumble and was tempted to look sideways to see if the baton had been retrieved, but she knew better. She kept her eyes fixed forward, pumping her arms and expertly increasing the tempo of her strides as she gathered momentum, coasting to victory with relative ease, breaking through the ribbon first as cheers, mingled with murmurs of dismay from the German supporters, rose from the crowd.
Ilse was sobbing as she fruitlessly searched for the baton, her teammates coming to her rescue and ushering her off the track. Ilse could not help herself, and neither could her teammates: they stared toward Hitler’s box. He simply nodded.
“She received it all right,” Helen wrote later in her diary of Ilse’s accident. “But then dropped it when she exchanged it from one hand to the other. You don’t have to do that if you were running last, but she was used to running first.” Had the Germans not dropped the baton, one could only speculate what would have happened, although of course Germany, and even journalists from the United States, believed that the team had practically handed the Americans their win.
Jesse Abramson, of the New York Herald Tribune, agreed. “It is doubtful if the Americans could have won,” Abramson wrote, attributing their success to luck as much as talent. But many begged to differ: Arthur Daley of The New York Times opined that “the chances were that the Reich would not have triumphed [as] Miss Dorrfeldt [sic] could not have beaten Miss Stephens even with an eight-yard lead in the getaway.” (Conveniently, he neglected to mention that the Germans had done so before, winning all of their preliminary heats.) Helen put it more bluntly. “I could have chewed her up.”
The New York Times speculated that the German women had found themselves “stage-struck” by Hitler, causing them to botch the pass. Regardless of that, the article continued, “Stephens, the wonder runner from Missouri who probably could have won anyway for the United States, was able to take things a bit more easily.” Fred Steers added his two cents: “The German team had a lead at the finish of the third leg when they dropped the baton. However, judging from her race in the final of the one hundred meters, Helen Stephens could have overcome the lead easily had the German girls not met with this misfortune.” And that’s how it resonated into posterity.
—
As the crowd stared in stunned silence, the four American athletes were guided to the podium, feted with the traditional laurel wreaths and their gold medals. Even more shocking was the sight of the American flag being raised on the German flagpole as “The Star-Spangled Banner” boomed throughout the stadium.
Betty clutched hold of her medal as she watched the American flag rising before her, the national anthem echoing throughout the field, and took it all in: the thousands of spectators clad in flashes of color; the enormity of the stadium around her; and, most of all, her teammates standing by her side, the women toward whom she felt the most immense gratitude swelling within her. She nodded, as if to answer the applause they were receiving but also in response to an internal question she had been asking herself and to which she had just received the answer. She knew as certainly as she had known that she would walk and run again that this was the last race she would ever participate in. She had proven herself and was ready to leave. She was officially done with running.
—
Betty would look back on 1928 and 1936 as being in two different lifetimes. The individual medal in the 100 meters in Amsterdam had essentially fallen into the lap of a talented but cocky, lucky sixteen-year-old who believed that only her merits had brought her to that point. (Later she had come to
admit that luck had also played a role.) Berlin was different. There had been no luck involved, she felt, and she dared anyone to tell her otherwise. She had earned her medal, just as her teammates had, proving that although she had been given a push into the limelight in 1928, in 1936 she had been the catalyst of her own good fortune as part of a team.
EPILOGUE
Shortly after the 1936 Olympic Games, Betty Robinson’s story became the model of an athlete who had done well: a young woman with natural athletic talent, accidentally discovered by a tenacious coach with unfulfilled Olympic dreams; a young woman who, in short order, had been groomed to participate in the Olympics, where, in the first track-and-field games ever to be run, had captured gold. With much more expected from her in the future, a terrible accident had left her at death’s door, nearly paralyzing her and leaving her unable to walk, let alone run. Her unflagging spirit had allowed her to become, twice and against all odds, a gold medalist. It was true grit that had propelled her to restore the strength she needed to win the second, in the company of excellent teammates, during the infamous Nazi Olympics, her story the stuff of legends.
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