1928 Summer Olympics / Athletics - 800 m (women)

sport	athletics
discipline	800 meter run
gender	Women
Attendees	25 athletes from 13 countries
Competition location	Olympic Stadium Amsterdam
Competition phase	August 1st, 1928 (preliminary) August 2nd, 1928 (final)
Medalists Lina Radke ( DEU )   Hitomi Kinue ( JPN )   Inga Gentzel ( SWE )

The women's 800-meter run at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam was held on August 1st and 2nd, 1928 in the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam . 31 athletes took part. After the competition, there was controversy about the continuation of such races.

Olympic champion was the German Lina Radke with a new world record ahead of the Japanese Hitomi Kinue and the Swede Inga Gentzel .

Existing records

• World record : 2: 19.6 min - Lina Radke ( Germany ), Brzeg (then Brieg), July 1, 1928
• The discipline was on the Olympic program for the first time. That is why there was no Olympic record yet .

Conducting the competition

On August 1st, three preliminary runs were completed. The three best runners in each case qualified for the final, which took place on August 2nd.

Note: The qualified runners are highlighted in light blue.

Prelims

The Canadian Jean Thompson won her preliminary run ahead of the US runner Florence MacDonald (l.)

Date: August 1, 1928

Not all times have been passed down.

Forward 1

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Marie Dollinger	German Empire	2: 22.4 min	OR
2	Inga Gentzel	Sweden	k. A.
3	Fanny Rosenfeld	Canada
4th	Anny Mallon	Netherlands	k. A.
5	Elisabeth Oestreich	German Empire
6th	Dee Boeckmann	United States

Forward 2

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Lina Radke	German Empire	2: 26.0 min
2	Hitomi Kinue	Japan	2: 26.4 min
3	Gertruda Kilosovna	Poland	2: 28.0 min
4th	Aat van Noort	Netherlands	k. A.
5	Edith Robinson	Australia
6th	Juliette Segers	Belgium
7th	Sébastienne Guyot	France
8th	Emy Pettersson	Sweden
9	Giannina Marchini	Italy
10	Rayma Wilson	United States

Forward 3

Lina Radke (r.) And Hitomi Kinue (l.) In the final

space	Surname	nation	time	annotation
1	Jean Thompson	Canada	2: 23.2 min
2	Florence MacDonald	United States	k. A.
3	Elfriede Wever	German Empire
4th	Mien Duchateau	Netherlands	k. A.
5	Ida Degrande	Belgium
6th	Marcelle Neveu	France
7th	Otylia Tabacka	Poland	2: 33.0 min
8th	Josefine Lauterbach	Austria	k. A.
9	Paula Radziulytė	Lithuania

final

space	Surname	nation	height	annotation
1	Lina Radke	German Empire	2: 16.8 min	WR
2	Hitomi Kinue	Japan	2: 17.6 min
3	Inga Gentzel	Sweden	2: 17.8 min
4th	Jean Thompson	Canada	2: 21.4 min
5	Fanny Rosenfeld	Canada	2: 22.4 min
6th	Florence MacDonald	United States	2: 22.6 min
7th	Marie Dollinger	German Empire	2: 23.0 min
8th	Gertruda Kilosovna	Poland	2: 28.0 min
9	Elfriede Wever	German Empire	k. A.

Date: August 2, 1928

Shortly after the start, the two Germans Elfriede Wever and Marie Dollinger took the lead. The Swede Inga Gentzel, who ran a non-officially recognized world record with 2: 19.2 minutes at the beginning of July , was halfway ahead with a transit time of 64.2 seconds. 300 meters from the finish, Lina Radke put on a long final sprint that Gentzel was not up to. The Japanese Kinue Hitomi came up from behind and pulled past the Swede to the silver medal. All medal winners stayed below the old world record.

Lina Radke's gold medal was the first ever German gold medal in athletics.

Hitomi Kinue was the first Japanese medalist, Inga Gentzel the first Swedish medalist.

Controversy over discipline as a women's sport

After the race, press reports drew attention to this race. The reports stated that five of the finalists had given up, five more had collapsed, and the last fainted in the locker room. As a result, after a vote by the IAAF, this discipline was removed from the Olympic program.

Lynne Emery of California Polytechnic State University revealed in her investigation that the news reports were false. All runners reached the goal, some of them undercut the current world record. She came to the conclusion that the removal of this discipline from the Olympic program was unjustified.

The women's 800-meter race was not held again until 1960 .

Picture gallery

• 

  The German finalists: Marie Dollinger (l.), Lina Radke (center) and Elfriede Wever (l.)

• 

  Inga Gentzel (SWE) won bronze.

• 

  Fanny Rosenfeld (CAN) came in fifth.

literature

Ekkehard zur Megede , The History of Olympic Athletics, Volume 1: 1896-1936, Verlag Bartels & Wernitz KG, Berlin, 2nd edition 1970, pp 214-216

Web links

• SportsReference 800 m ,
• Official report pp. 470–473, engl. (PDF), accessed on May 24, 2014

Video

• Women Compete in Track and Field for the First Time - 1928 Olympics , range 0:05 min to 0:23 min published on December 13, 2012 on youtube.com, accessed on May 24, 2014

Individual evidence

1. ↑ IAAF Statistics Handbook, Berlin 2009, page 641 ( Memento from June 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ SportsReference (Eng.)
3. ↑ Lynne Emery: An Examination of the 1928 Olympic 800 meter race for women, from "Proceedings of the North American Society for Sport" (1982), page 30 ( Memento of the original from September 23, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.