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1894: the French baron Pierre de Coubertin (1863-1937) refounded the Olympic Games during a congress at the Sorbonne as a hymn to virility, a union of “brawn and brains” of which only men were supposed to be capable. There was therefore no need to formally exclude feminine athletes, because their absence went without saying: they were not thought of, because they were unthinkable. The first games were held in 1896 without them, to their great discontent. Despite the misogynous opposition of its founder, which was widespread throughout Europe, the 1900 Paris Games included 22 women (French, Belgian, Italian, Russian, etc.) out of 997 participants, with each gender competing separately. The British tennis player Charlotte Cooper (1870-1966) was the first woman to win a gold medal. Participation was nonetheless limited to so-called feminine sports, the former leisure activities of the aristocracy (tennis, sailing, croquet, horseriding, figure skating); these protected femininity and fertility, but also respected decency and avoided any kind of strenuous or sustained effort, a requirement that was incompatible with high-level sports. The world champion for figure skating, the Briton Madge Syers (1881-1917), was thus wearing a skirt that ran to her mid-calf when she was awarded the individual gold medal and the bronze couples medal (with her husband) in London in 1908. Her compatriots also distinguished themselves, notably the archer Queenie Newall (1854-1929), who finished first among 25 participants from Britain, France, and the United States. Despite popular fervour, the organizers of the Olympic games still limited feminine presence. In 1917 this injustice became the struggle of Alice Milliat (1899-1938), the pioneering rower who was the president of the women’s sports centre Femina sport (1912), as well as treasurer of the Fédération française du sport féminin (1917). She called for the admittance of female atheletes to all Olympic sports, pointing out that the role played by women during World War One invalidated the argument of “natural fragility” advanced by their opponents. In 1919, the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which consisted entirely of men, refused the feminization of the showpiece events of track and field during the Antwerp games. That year the press rejoiced less about the gold medal won by the skater Magda Julin (1894-1990) than the Swede’s “long black velvet dress, brightened by a white collar.” Major figures emerged nevertheless
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