Tom McNab gives a potted history of the last gender-divided track and field event The 1928 Olympic 800m (won by Radke of Germany, not Japan's Hitomi) caused the Daily Mail to recruit a doctor who said endurance competitions should be banned because "women would become old too soon"; the women's 800m did not reappear until 1960. All athletics events are fertile constructs of the human imagination and owe little to science. In 1904 the St Louis Olympic decathlon featured an 800-yard walk. The firs...
Tom McNab gives a potted history of the last gender-divided track and field event The 1928 Olympic 800m (won by Radke of Germany, not Japan's Hitomi) caused the Daily Mail to recruit a doctor who said endurance competitions should be banned because "women would become old too soon"; the women's 800m did not reappear until 1960. All athletics events are fertile constructs of the human imagination and owe little to science. In 1904 the St Louis Olympic decathlon featured an 800-yard walk. The firs...
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