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Fanny Blankers-Koen – Google Doodle marks the Dutch Olympic legend on her 100th birthday
26th April 2018,
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SHE was the trailblazing Dutch track star whose achievements at the 1948 London Olympics made a mockery of stereotypes about female athletes.
Now Fanny Blankers-Koen is being commemorated with a Google Doodle on what would have been her 100th birthday – here is what you need to know about her...
Who was Fanny Blankers-Koen?
Fanny Blankers-Koen was born Francina Elsje Koen on April 26, 1918, in Lage Vuursche, a small village in the Netherlands.
The daughter of a government official who competed in the discus and shot put, she was an athletic teenager who excelled in tennis, swimming and gymnastics.
However, it was as a runner that Blankers-Koen made the biggest impression, and she set a national 800m record in just her third race.
At the age of 18, she appeared in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, coming joint-sixth in the high jump and fifth in the 4x100m relay.
During the games, she also secured the autograph of Jesse Owens, the iconic black American athlete who embarrassed Hitler's Nazi regime with four gold medals.
She married former triple jumper and sports journalist Jan Blankers in August 1940 during World War Two, and gave birth to their first child, Jan Junior, the following year.
Although at the time it was expected that female athletes would retire when they started having children, Blankers-Koen was in training within weeks of her son's birth.
Competing in German-occupied Holland she went from strength to strength, establishing six world records between 1942 and 1944.
The birth of her second child, Fanny Junior, came just six weeks before the first major post-war athletics meeting.
Despite this, she took two gold medals at the 1946 European Championships in Oslo, in the 80m hurdles and 4x100m relay.
The biggest triumph of Blankers-Koen's glittering career came two years later.
Ahead of the 1948 Olympics in London she was written off by many, and criticised by those who thought she should stop competing to focus on being a wife and mother.
She proved them wrong in spectacular fashion, winning gold medals in the 100m, 80m hurdles, 200m and 4x100m, becoming the first woman to take four golds in a single Olympics.
Earning her the nickname "The Flying Housewife", her achievements crushed stereotypes and showed the world that female athletes could have a family while competing – and winning – at the highest level.
Although she made the Dutch squad for the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki at the age of 34, she was hampered by injury and it proved her final top level event.
After her athletic career came to an end Blankers-Koen served as team leader for the Dutch athletics team for 10 years.
She died on January 25, 2004, at the age of 85, after suffering from Alzheimer's disease in her later years.
What is a Google Doodle?
In 1998, the search engine founders Larry and Sergey drew a stick figure behind the second 'o' of Google as a message to that they were out of office at the Burning Man festival and with that, Google Doodles were born.
The company decided that they should decorate the logo to mark cultural moments and it soon became clear that users really enjoyed the change to the Google homepage.
In that same year, a turkey was added to Thanksgiving and two pumpkins appeared as the 'o's for Halloween the following year.
Now, there is a full team of doodlers, illustrators, graphic designers, animators and classically trained artists who help create what you see on those days.
Among the Doodles published in recent months were ones commemorating German scientist Robert Koch, Jan Ingenhousz (who discovered photosynthesis) and the 50th anniversary of kids coding languages being introduced.
In September last year, the search giant celebrated the Autumn Equinox , which marked the official ending of summer and the coming of autumn.
SHE was the trailblazing Dutch track star whose achievements at the 1948 London Olympics made a mockery of stereotypes about female athletes.
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