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kompootor t1_jb54i2q wrote

Sidebar comment from the above in case anyone is interested further: the prewar data that is easily available is terrible, but a lot of it is still out there, poorly summarized in disparate sources. For womens Olympics history, the 1922 Women's World Games, aka the Women's Olympic Games (but confusingly for those trying to research it took place at a very similar time and place to the 1922 Women's Olympiad, with several of the same athletes, and yet several events having just slightly different lengths). Afaict the sources that will be most likely to hold the final incomplete data in the medalist table are a bunch of old contemporaneous Russian-language sports magazines that would most likely be in a national museum or archive in Ukraine or Russia or perhaps another state that has had Russian as a major language. Another interesting thing to look at is the athletes. Mary Lines shows up everywhere as a multi-sport international athlete of the time, but she has a very sparse bio on Wikipedia, as what's widely available on her seems to be poorly cited and/or difficult to otherwise plausibly verify. But a lot of these women (pseudo-)Olympians potentially have very interesting stories, especially those who did not start as, or who were not currently professional tennis players (tennis was basically the only respectable "get-sweaty" sport for women at the time, but stuff like archery and lawn sports were also big).

The politics and logistics of the WWG and early women's Olympics are fascinating too, since the regular Olympics at the time was not at all the quintessential transnational institution it is today. They all struggled with just the basics of funding at all levels, even just to get the necessary grants to bring all of the world's (aka Europe's) top athletes to a single location, so either the women's games could have been viewed by the IOC as a potential popularity/legitimacy booster for the Olympics, or it could be viewed as a competitor for scarce resources and thus an existential threat.

That's my pitch for some obscure sports history. And if you want to do further reading on this or any such topic, I strongly recommend complementing your learning with cited edits to Wikipedia -- that's how I was able to type almost all of the above (and on much much more) from memory still, even though my edits to these topics come from several years ago. Protip: in most cases don't engage in arguments on the site -- just walk away.

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