The nearly 300 athletes who descended on Athens, Greece, that April of 1896, journeying from 12 nations, have been greeted with fireworks and parades and feasts catering to their every desire.

They were there to compete in forty-three activities, and a few 60,000 lovers had also arrived in the town to take part in what promised to be the glittering opening ceremony of the current Olympic Games.

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There had even been some individuals of the Greek royal family within the target market, gracing the stadium with their presence. And the festivities might keep for the following ten days, a mixture of athleticism, medal ceremonies, parties, meals orgies, and sensual pleasures; 10 days of crowds, applause, and loud cheers that might reverberate for the duration of the city and its surroundings.

Looking around himself, Pierre de Coubertin changed into pleased approximately how the Games had been going off. Credited as the man who revived the contemporary Olympics, he did not appear before everything look like he fit the function of a sportsman, however as a substitute, that of a stuffy French aristocrat who simplest became interested in the blessings of physical education sometimes inside the mid-Eighteen Eighties, throughout a trip to the U.S.

It was in the course of that trip that an idea had taken root in his mind: Reviving the historic Greek games, what several others had tried to do, but not succeeded. As time exceeded, he convinced several noted individuals that this would be a worthy endeavor, especially for France. This movement started by using what many considered a cranky Frenchman would supply upward thrust to the present-day Olympic Games and the formation of the International Olympic Committee.

So now, here they all were, in April of 1896, the Games symbolically taking area in Athens. But there was the most straightforward one that seemed to blot out the celebrations: Women have been excluded from the athletic activities. They may want to partake in the festivities, accompanied by chaperones. As contributors, they were not even considered.
Coubertin continually had expected the Olympics as a display of athletic performances, representing guys’ abilities, persistence, power, masculinity, and braveness. He is no way believed girls possessed any of these tendencies; hence, they could best stand apart as spectators.

“Women have, however, one mission, that of the role of crowning the winner with garlands,” he said. “In public competitions, women’s participation needs to be certainly prohibited. It is indecent that spectators might be exposed to the danger of seeing the frame of a girl being smashed before their eyes.” Given a few backlashes he became receiving, he determined to show a piece of pliability and subsequently agreed that a few girls, if so willing, should input horses inside the Games, but purest in those equestrian activities where the horses had been the stars of the display.

Stamata Revathi didn’t want to be a horsewoman but an athlete. Whether to be defiant or to reveal to others that it can be finished, she entered the marathon and finished the race in fifty one/2 hours, besting a number of the men. Needless to say, her run was no longer formally recorded.

Pierre de Coubertin turned into even less happy while, in 1900, four years after the inaugural Games in Greece, ladies made their appearance on the Games in Paris. The concept of a male-handiest Olympiad had fairly backfired. Therefore the IOC had determined to permit a constrained number of women to participate in a similarly limited wide variety of activities, the one’s events deemed feminine and benign sufficient that the audience ought to tolerate. There weren’t awesome many woman members — only 22 out of 947 athletes.

It seemed that 22 had been nevertheless too many for Coubertin’s liking, although they have been allowed to participate handiest in tennis, to golf, and to curse. It becomes there that Helene de Pourtales of Switzerland has become the first lady champion as a member of a sailing team. Charlotte Cooper of Britain had the respect of turning into the first tennis champion.

Margaret Abbott of the Chicago Golf Club won the golf tournament. As if to diminish Abbott’s success, she wasn’t even offered a gold medal; instead, she has gifted a gilded porcelain bowl, which many believed become an award more applicable for a girl.

She additionally had the distinction of competing in opposition to her mother, Mary Abbott, who changed into additionally a member of the Chicago Golf Club, who came in seventh, and that they remain the simplest mom-daughter duo to have played at the Olympics.

Although movements had been being made to consist of women in the Olympics, the reality becomes that inclusion becomes slow in coming, and when the ladies have been allowed to take part, the male athletes no longer want them there. By 1919, Alice Milliat had had sufficient. A French translator, creator, what could be taken into consideration these days as a feminist and a rower, she had started a conversation with the IOC and with the International Association of Athletics Federations about the approaching 1924 Summer Games and about having extra ladies’ sports — all of the ones the athletes have been worried in, instead of merely a variety of them. The IOC refused her demands, believing that to combine the Olympics fully could take the highlight far from the genuine athletes, the guys.

Peeved, to mention the least, Milliat got down to prepare a “Women’s Olympiad” to show off ladies’ powerful capabilities, to be held in Monte Carlo. These Games, while innovative, grew to become out to be simplest a preview of her extra involved “Women’s World Games.”
By 1922, Milliat and her group of organizers had been equipped to inaugurate the first-ever “Women’s Olympic Games” to be held in Paris. They had decided that the athletes might conflict it out in 11 activities, including the shot positioned, javelin, and high leap. It changed into a remarkable achievement, with more than 20,000 spectators watching as almost a dozen international data had been set.

Despite the accolades the athletes received, and despite the paintings, Milliat had put into the Women’s Olympic Games, the IOC nonetheless refused to encompass the events the women had competed in for the 1924 Summer Games. They also challenged Milliat’s use of the phrase “Olympic” in her Games and fought her to trade it. She finally did, and by using 1926, they have become the Women’s World Games.