Women’s Sporting Pioneer Milliat Remembered At Paris 2024

Women’s Sporting Pioneer Milliat Remembered At Paris 2024

by Philip Barker at Le Stade de France, Paris

An actress representing women’s sports activist Alice Milliat has been at many of the events this week.

She wore a long dress and held a parasol when she appeared among the spectators. Like them she was able to watch a full programme of women’s athletics at the Stade de France, something that the real Alice Milliat would have been unable to do 100 years ago.

In fact, there were no women’s events in 1924.

Milliat’s contribution towards women’s sport was acknowledged at the Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony in a set piece honouring inspirational women. During the event “statues” appeared during the procession along the Seine.

These are now in storage but Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has pledged to put them on permanent display.

In a statement, the Mayor’s office said “We hope that they will remain permanently in the eyes of all, to allow these women to be highlighted. The idea would be to exhibit these statues in rue de la Chapelle, along the new green spaces. It is a popular area, which has just been renovated as part of the work for the Games.”

As part of efforts by Paris 2024 to promote Olympic history an actor has also played the part of Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French nobleman who spearheaded the revival of the Olympics.

His final Games as International Olympic Committee President were in 1924.

Milliat came into conflict with him because he was unhappy about the participation of women.

Coubertin’s revival of the Olympics concept of bringing the world together deserves credit. However, many today are critical of his position on women’s participation.

“Their role should above all be to crown the victors,” Coubertin wrote. It was a belief he maintained to the end of his life. He was not alone. Walter George, a runner of some repute in the 19th century, was equally dismissive of women who participated.

“With women who take up sport, the tendency is to overdo it,” George declared.

Milliat was unimpressed.

“They could do themselves a favour by showing some interest in women’s sport; they shut themselves away in their everlasting male egoism,” she declared.

Milliat had been a rower and would therefore have been unable to take part in the 1924 Olympics in her sport. Women’s events were not included in the programme until  1976.

She was born in Nantes in 1884, joined the club Femina Sport before the First World War and became its President in 1915.

In 1920, the Olympic Games were held for the first time in eight years, but there remained few opportunities for women. In fact, only 65 women competed in swimming, diving and figure skating.

Milliat founded the International Feminine Sports Federation (FSFI)

The French publication Cahiers de la République des Lettres des Sciences et des Sports described Milliat as “the soul of the women’s sports movement, a living example of modern woman, accustomed to all sports disciplines, highly capable of fulfilling the social role which falls to women in this vibrant 20th century.”

In April 1921, an event for “women’s physical education and women’s sports” was held in Monte Carlo with the assistance of Camille Blanc, Mayor of nearby Beausoleil.

“One hears that netball has taken a firm hold on the French schoolgirls sporting affections,” said newspaper reports.

The programme was said to have contained athletics, drill, dance and netball.

Then in 1922 came a World Women’s Games. These were held at the Pershing Stadium. This was an arena which staged the 1919 Inter-Allied Games for demobilised soldiers. Nestling in the peaceful setting of the woods around Vincennes, it might seem an unlikely place to continue a revolution.

“That was a heroic time, when the same female athlete competed in six or seven events on the same day,” Milliat recalled later.

There were to be 77 women from five nations taking part in the competition.

IOC papers note particular concern at the use of the term “Women’s Olympiad” which newspapers used to describe the events.

“The Committee interviewed Madame Milliat, President of the Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale and pressed for the withdrawal of the term Olympic which her federation is using in connection with the Women’s Worlds Games which it is organising.”

Women athletes were then described in some circles as “Les Incorrectes.”

At the Paris Games, it was only possible for women to compete in limited events in swimming and diving, fencing and tennis. Many male sporting officials accepted their presence only grudgingly even after Coubertin stood down as IOC President in 1925.

Milliat lobbied  the International Amateur Athletic Federation.(IAAF) President Sigfrid Edstrom, also an IOC member.

There were further Women’s Games held in Gothenburg.

“People are interested in the Women’s Olympic Games, during the last Games in Gothenburg, all foreign diplomats spent a night travelling from Stockholm to watch the athletics events. Is that not proof in itself?” Milliat asked.

In 1926, the International Amateur Athletic Federation Congress finally agreed that women’s athletic events were to be added to the 1928 Olympic programme “as a trial”. A special committee charged with the details of women’s sport was appointed.

“We hope that good cooperation between the two federations will continue and we are looking forward to the time to come, when Madame Milliat and her friends will unite with us completely,” Edstrom insisted.

Even so, the women’s programme at the Amsterdam 1928 Olympics was limited to the 100 metres, 800m, 4x100m relay on the track and high jump and discus.

Kinue Hitomi, who won both long jump and standing long jump at the 1926 Women’s World Games, became the first Japanese woman to win an Olympic medal when she took silver in the 800m behind Germany’s Lina Radke-Batschauer.

Swiss official Franz Messerli, a member of the jury of appeal, related how Canadian and Japanese competitors had collapsed at the finish.

“The public and the journalists believed them to be in a state of exhaustion,” Messerli wrote. “I was judging this particular event and on the spot at the time, I can therefore certify that there was nothing wrong with them, they burst into tears thus betraying their disappointment at having lost the race.”

Even so, many officials were quick to use the pretext that some runners had finished in a distressed state to remove what was the longest race for women from the programme.

The Danish member Ivar Nyholm sent a message to the IOC Session in 1929.

“At a meeting of the Scandinavian countries, a resolution was passed urging a complete suppression of all women’s events from the Games,” Nyholm said.

The Finnish member, Ernst Krogius, wrote that the Finnish Olympic Committee had “voted for the exclusion of women entirely from the Games.”

Although the IOC did not go that far, no race above the distance of 200m was included in future Games, a restriction that remained in force until 1960.

In other sports restrictions were only lifted slowly and few women were in positions of influence.

Milliat died in 1957, four years before the election of Inger Frith as International Archery Federation President in 1961. Frith is generally considered to be the first woman president of a major International Federation.

Monique Berlioux, a journalist who had swum for France in the 1948 Olympics became the IOC’s Bureau chief in Lausanne but it was not until 1981 that a woman was co-opted as an IOC member for the first time.

By this time women’s hockey had at last made its debut, but cycling did not include an event for women until 1984.

Gender equality has finally been reached with these Paris 2024 Games. Women such as French Olympic and Paralympics Minister Amelie Oudea Castera have figured prominently in the preparations for these Olympic Games.

There is also a gymnasium named in honour of Milliat in the 14th arrondissement in Paris.