NOTE: The information below is accurate on the date of publication. Further research may reveal information which changes or replaces some of the details. Check later postings to keep up to date by select “Olympics” in the search box or the tag list.
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| Ella Maillart |
At the 1924 Paris games there was the first currently-known female lgbt Olympian, the Swiss sailor Ella Maillart (1903-1997). She was also the first female sailor in the Olympics, and the youngest sailor and only woman to compete in her event. She was the youngest of the 5 women in the 141-strong Swiss Olympic team, and at the time was also the captain of the Swiss national women’s hockey team (which was not an Olympic event in 1924). So, Ella Maillart was not just another competitor, she has several records to her name.
If these achievements weren’t enough, Ella was also an international skier, a journalist, a photographer, an adventurer, and an anthropologist who travelled extensively in Asia and Russia, writing several books. In the future I’ll write a proper “Extraordinary Lives” article about her adventures, but for today I want to concentrate on her Olympic career, and a connection to another sportswoman.
Despite her active adult life, Ella was a sickly child. She was born in Switzerland into a wealthy family. She was an avid reader and soaked up information from geography books and maps and became fascinated by adventure and travel writing.
Like most people brought up in a country with a lot of snow, Ella learnt to ski as a child. At the age of 10 the family moved to a village on the shores of Lake Geneva. It was the yachts and boats on the lake that attracted her the most, and she soon had the sailors and boatmen teaching her and a friend, Miette de Saussure, how to sail a small boat. In fact, in less than three years Ella and Miette had won their first sailing race.
The open sea then beckoned. In 1923 Ella and Miette sailed from Cannes to Greece. They had then planned a voyage to the South Pacific but Miette fell ill soon after they set sail and the whole voyage was abandoned. That was lucky for us, because Ella would have been too far away and in the wrong part of the world to take part in the 1924 Paris Olympics.
The 1924 Olympic regatta was smaller than the previous one. In 1920 in Antwerp there were races for 12 classes of boat. In Paris there was just 3 classes, and they would be the first to feature single-handed boats. Ella entered this single-handed class, which was for the Olympic Monotype dinghy (also called the French National Monotype or the Meulan class dinghy). The dinghies were supplied by the French sailing association. However, only 10 of these monotypes were available, and there were 17 registered entries from 17 nations in the competition.
A set of elimination races had to be held. These took place on the Seine near Paris, the course going from Meulan to Le Mureaux and back again. There were 2 rounds of 2 heats each, with the first 2 finishers in round 1 going straight to the final. The others went into round 2 and the first 2 finishers of those heats also went in to the final. In heat 2 of round 1 Ella finished 5th out of 8 sailors in a time that placed her in 7th place over both heats. But she needed to finish in the top 2 in the round 2 heats to qualify for the final.
In heat 2 of round 2 she finished in 3rd place, just 5 seconds behind the 2 qualifiers for the final. The official Olympic results don’t include any of the heat times or places of the non-finalists in the final results table. They are all listed as “also competed”.
Today, all the finishing times would be taken into account and there would be a full placing list for all 17 entries. So, where would Ella Maillart have been placed if the best time of the non-finalists was taken into account? Of the 3 sailors in all the heats who did not qualify for the final, only 3 finished in under 2 minutes. The 3rd of these was Ella in round 1 in a time that was just half a second short of those 2 minutes. This would have placed her in 11th position overall. As I mentioned earlier, Ella was the first woman to skipper a boat at the Olympics, and was the youngest in the competition, so any result is history-making.
The 1924 regatta is being recreated to celebrate its centenary in June at the original location. There is also a new biography of Ella that has just been published (in French), and there are 2 exhibitions specifically dedicated to her. One is in Geneva, which end this week, and the other is opening in June in Morges, just 10 kilometres from the “Olympic capital” Lausanne.
Before I leave, I must mention Ella’s connection to an alleged lgbt+ Olympian. During her many travels around the world Ella was accompanied by Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942), a Swiss journalist and photographer like Ella herself. Annemarie was openly lesbian and had many affairs. When it comes to her relationship with Ella Maillart biographers differ. The consensus is that their relationship was deeply emotional, but not all biographers go so far as to define it as lesbian. After mulling over the different opinions I consider a lesbian relationship to have been very likely, even if it was not physical.
Annemarie’s mother was a famous equestrian rider, Renée Schwarzenbach-Wille (1883-1959). She was married with four children in addition to Annemarie. She was openly bisexual and had a long affair with an opera singer.
Many online references, including Wikipedia (no surprise), claim that Renée competed at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. She was certainly a champion horse rider, as her many recorded results testify. But as far as the Olympics is concerned there is no record of her. Her name does not appear in any of the official published Olympic reports or results books. She does not appear on any official Olympic website. There isn’t even any mention of her attending any Olympics in the biography of her written by her own great-grandson in 2004. In fact, everything suggests that she had stopped competing before 1936. So, no, she doesn’t go on my lgbt+ Olympian list.
That wraps it up for today. As I said, next year I’ll try to write a full account of Ella Maillart’s “Extraordinary Life”. Until then we have the 2024 Paris Olympics to look forward to, and new batch of lgbt+ athletes ready to enter the record books alongside Ella Maillart.
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