REMEMBERING AN EARLIER SEXUALLY AMBIGUOUS OLYMPIAN

Jarmila Kratochvílová

The controversy about the mannish female boxers from Algeria and Taiwan reminded me of an earlier female Olympian whose name was not heard recently by me. Forty years ago, a Czech middle-distance runner named Jarmila Kratochvílová simply obliterated her competition, all the next bests in the world, at 400 metres and 800 metres.

    Find footage on YouTube to see how she won not by a few yards but many. And to see how she looked like a man with broad shoulders, a flat chest, and (unwisely) short hair. While her 1983 winning time for 47.99 minutes for the 400 lasted two years, her 1984 achievement on an outdoor track of 47.6 still stands, as the longest surviving milestone in women’s track. The winning time in the 2024 Olympics was 48.17, which is to say more than a half-minute longer.

   At the time, skeptics blamed her masculine physique upon illegal drugs, supposedly used more often in Communist Europe than anywhere else; but her Czech coach claimed rigorous training and high doses of vitamin B12. Others wondered about her advanced age in competitions where most champions peak in their early twenties. Not until her late twenties were Jarmila’s times competitive, while her world records were set when she was officially 32. Once she retired, she never had children.

   No other track star was quite mannish in appearance, neither in Communist countries nor elsewhere.

    Look again at the footage of her races and tell me that she doesn’t look like a man defeating girls. In the immortal words of Chico Marx: “Who are you gonna believe? Me, or your own eyes."