July 31: Canada’s Greatest Woman Athlete

Bobbie (Fanny) Rosenfeld, born in Russia but living in Canada since age 4, won a silver medal in the 100-yard dash at the Amsterdam Olympics on this date in 1928. A stenographer by day in a Toronto chocolate factory, Rosenfeld broke many barriers to women’s participation in sports by excelling in track, softball, hockey, tennis, and basketball, without the benefit of coaching or training. She also mixed in a capacity for wisecracking that made her one of Canada’s favorite celebrities. “The most efficient way to summarize Bobbie Rosenfeld’s career,” quipped one writer, “is to say that she was not good at swimming.” Rosenfeld gained a national following as a dominant track star at the 1923 Canadian National Exhibition, and then won her silver medal as well as a gold medal for the 400-meter relay at the 1928 Games. Her athletic career was ended precipitously by arthritis, but she shifted successfully into coaching and sportswriting, with a twenty-year column in the Toronto Globe and Mail. A 1950 poll of Canadian sportswriters voted her Canada’s “Female Athlete of the Half-Century,” and she was inducted into Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in its inaugural year, 1955.
“Athletic maids, to arms! . . . We are no longer satisfied with being just a ‘rib of Adam,’ but we have elected to hurl the discus, throw the javelin, run and jump as ‘Adam’ does.” —Bobbie Rosenfeld