SASKATOON LILY
Ethel Catherwood among first female Olympians to emerge as defining athlete of their Games.
The lady who came to the door didn’t at all resemble “The Saskatoon Lily” of her astounding athletic youth.
This woman, with a red wig askew atop her head, was bent over with age. And rage. No, she would absolutely not give an interview to the Star journalist who had come from Toronto, showing up unannounced at her doorstop in the Northern California hamlet of Grass Valley. “Go away!” When the reporter persisted, the implacable former Olympic gold medallist sicced her Doberman.
That damn dog was snapping at my heels as I scrambled over the chain link fence surrounding Ethel Catherwood’s secluded property.
It was the mid-’80s and Catherwood had not thawed an iota in her hatred of the media. The same media which, six decades earlier, had fawned over the statuesquely gorgeous high jumper from Saskatchewan. Legendary Star sportswriter Lou Marsh, covering the 1927 Canadian track and field championships, wrote of Catherwood: “From the instant this tall, slim graceful girl from the Prairies tossed aside her long flowing cloak of purple and made her first leap, the fans fell for her. A flower-like face of rare beauty above a long, slim body simply clad in pure white . . . she looked like a tall strange lily — and was immediately christened by the crowd ‘The Saskatoon Lily.’ ”
Well, that was Marsh’s frothy flourish. But thus, Catherwood would be forever known, even a half-century after she fled the spotlight, and in her 1988 obituary by Star sports editor Jim Proudfoot (she had died the year before but it wasn’t publicly known until almost eight months later). That is, when she wasn’t called, as one Toronto newspaper put it in a headline it deemed flattering: “The Flying Hebe.” Yup, we had no qualms about calling Jews “Hebes” in those overtly anti-Semitic days.
Catherwood was actually born in North Dakota, a detail that didn’t emerge until the year she was engulfed in scandal for obtaining a quickie Reno divorce from the man she’d secretly wed, not long before and shortly thereafter marrying someone else. This was the stuff of racy headlines in the early ’30s, a thudding fall from grace for the star of the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam.
Catherwood, who’d turned down Hollywood offers to make movies — “I’d rather gulp poison than try my hand at motion pictures” — stopped talking to reporters after that 1931 newspaper expose, eventually sold off all her sports trophies, including the gold medal, and didn’t even respond when she was elected to the sports hall of fame. What a dame. You’ve got to admire her contrariness; the refusal to forgive.
Remember instead “Canada’s sweetheart” — that timeless sobriquet — who leapt 1.59 metres in Amsterdam, defeating Dutchwoman Lien Gisolf in front of a wildly partisan crowd.
It was the first — and thus far only — gold medal won by an individual Canadian female track and field athlete at the Olympics. On that same August day, Canada’s women’s relay squad from Toronto also copped gold. That quartet included Fanny (Bobbie) Rosenfeld, later voted Canada’s female athlete of the half-century.
Until 1928, females had been permitted to participate in only tennis, golf and swimming at the Games. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who founded the modern Olympics, had been adamantly opposed to females storming the Games barricades. “It is against my wishes that they have been admitted to an increasing number of contests.”
Even the pope, Pius XI, denounced women’s inclusion in such apparently strenuous exertion. Not ladylike, fuelling notions of wayward masculinity in females, the suspicion they were all lesbian inclined, women masquerading as men.
On at least one occasion, the sexist allegation was correct: Poland’s Stella Walsh, a sprinter who took gold in 1932, was shot dead during a robbery in Cleveland in 1984. At autopsy, she was discovered to be a he. Gold in the 100 metres was belatedly awarded to the silver-placed competitor — Canada’s Hilda Strike.
Where transgender athletes will ultimately fall on the Olympic spectrum is an ongoing issue, though sex reassignment surgery is no longer a requirement for distinguishing males from females. In 1976, the equestrian Princess Anne was the only Games participant who didn’t have to take a gender verification test. Gender testing was officially ditched by the IOC in 1999.
Women have always been athletic, some of them exceptionally so. But it took a profound cultural shift, in tandem with the feminist movement of the ’60s, to challenge stereotypical ideas of femininity; that it was OK to sweat and grunt in pursuit of sports.
Saskatoon Lilly, Bobbie Rosenfeld, the multi-talented phenomenon Babe Didrikson — gold and silver in hurdles, high jump and javelin at the ’32 Games, best remembered for her achievements on the golf course — were in the vanguard of ladies who embodied citius, altius, fortius. Although, for a long time, media celebrity was still conferred primarily on pretty women, the emphasis always on their fetching looks. Even today, Serena Williams — who will be in Rio with sister Venus and is arguably the greatest female athlete ever, not just the greatest female tennis player ever — gets grief rather than a pile of endorsements for her muscular physique
But the most memorable female Olympians, those who emerged as the defining athlete of their Games, have always had style. Wilma Rudolph — The Tornado — who became the first U.S. woman to win three gold medals in one Games, 1960. Thus transformed also, as a black athlete, into a symbol for the civil rights movement.
Twelve-time swim medallist Dara Torres, who competed in five Olympics, oldest woman in the pool in Beijing.
The imperious Yelena Isinbayeva, who nailed pole vaulting gold in 2004 and 2008. Isinbayeva still holds the world record in a sport which women weren’t allowed to contest at the Olympics until 2000. But to her loud dismay, she won’t be allowed to vie for gold in Brazil because of the ban invoked against Russia for its doping shenanigans.
Larisa Latynina, Russian gymnast: 18 medals, nine gold, from 1956 to 1964.
Jackie Joyner-Kersee: three golds and two bronze in heptathlon and long jump, though she was always overshadowed — at least in the celebrity firmament — by her flamboyant talon-nailed sister-in-law, the late sprinter Florence Joyner, her sudden death in 1998 still a mystery.
Canada’s divine Clara Hughes, the only athlete from this country to medal in both Summer and Winter Games as a cyclist and speed skater.
Silken Laumann, who famously trained with the men’s rowing team, odds-on favourite to claim gold at the ’92 Olympics. She shattered her leg in a training collision mere months before the Games yet trained her heart out and returned in time, her bronze medal the most compelling story in Barcelona, a testament to courage and grit. Laumann carried the Canadian flag at the closing ceremonies.
Cathy Freeman, the aboriginal who lit the flame at the Sydney Games and then won the 400-metres race. Maria Mutola — The Maputo Express — an eternal icon in her native Mozambique, gold in the 800 metres in Sydney. The International Amateur Athletic Federation had long opposed females racing the 800 as too arduous. (After women — and men, it should be noted — collapsed at the end of the 800 in Amsterdam, the event was banned for females until 1960.)
Nadia Comaneci, who I watched earn the first perfect 10 ever in gymnastics at the Montreal Games and three golds for Romania. The girl who never smiled. She was 14.
Mia Hamm . . . Guo Jingjing . . . Australia’s “Golden Girl” Betty Cuthbert . . . Gertrude Ederle . . . Olga Korbut . . . Jessica Ennis-Hill . . . Mary Lou Retton . . . A panoply of Olympic goddesses. There’s an old axiom: Horses sweat, men perspire, women glisten.
Dames dare to sweat.