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The Ancient Olympic Games

The very first Olympic games were held in 776 BCE. It wasn’t particularly grand—just a foot race—and I have no idea whether women participated. The sources don’t specify. It’s easy to assume that means no, but that is just an assumption. It could also mean everyone was welcome, and it never occurred to anyone to write it down because why shouldn’t women be allowed in a footrace?

The Olympics grew in ancient Greece and by their heyday, women were definitely and positively not allowed to compete in the large array of events held in the stadium that could handle 50,000 fans. Women couldn’t even be among the fans. It was illegal for a woman to sneak in to watch all these sweaty athletes competing in the nude. If she was caught, she would be thrown off a cliff (Pausanias, 5.6.7).

It’s unclear exactly why. Some people have assumed the uniform of nudity was the problem, but I am not so sure about that rationale. Most ancient societies were considerably less fussy about nudity than the Victorians, and even the Victorians wouldn’t have considered it an offense punishable by death. I think it’s more likely just a part of the general Greek pattern of segregating people by gender and keeping women at home. Athens was particularly bad in that respect, and they left us most of the records we have.

Even so, I also don’t know how many women were actually thrown off a cliff. Maybe it was more bluff than real. There is a record of one woman who was spared. She snuck in as a trainer. They didn’t kill her. But they did change the rules to make trainers appear in the nude too. That way no women could sneak in that way again (Pausanias 5.6.7-8; 6.7).

The closest women got to winning the ancient Olympics was owning the horses that won the chariot race. Cynisca’s horses won in the 396 and the 392 BCE games. Thirty years later Euryleonis’s horses won (Spears, 40). There are a few other women in that category (Spears, 46). I have no word on whether any exceptions were made to allow these women to watch their own horses compete.

But this doesn’t mean that women weren’t athletes in ancient Greece. Just that they weren’t Olympic athletes. Homer mentions girls playing sports in The Odyssey, but only in an informal pickup-match in the back yard kind of way (Spears, 34). Plato goes so far as to suggest that girls should learn gymnastics, riding, fencing, archery, javelin throwing, fencing, and footracing, but he does not say whether girls of his time actually did those things, or just that they should (Spears, 38). There are suggestions that Spartan girls and Dorian girls did sports more than Athenian girls, but since almost all of our sources are Athenian, it’s hard to get concrete details on the other Greek city-states.

The Heraean Games

It is not until 175 CE that a Roman writer named Pausanius mentions that there is an ancient female counterpart to the Olympic Games. It’s called the Heraean Games. As per usual we know much, much less about the women’s sports than the men’s because of course we do. Let’s face it, not much has changed in two and a half millennia.

Here’s what Pausanias says:

“The games consist of foot-races for maidens. These are not all of the same age. The first to run are the youngest; after them come the next in age, and the last to run are the oldest of the maidens. They run in the following way: their hair hangs down, a tunic reaches to a little above the knee, and they bare the right shoulder as far as the breast. These too have the Olympic stadium reserved for their games, but the course of the stadium is shortened for them by about one-sixth of its length. To the winning maidens they give crowns of olive and a portion of the cow sacrificed to Hera. They may also dedicate statues with their names inscribed upon them… The games of the maidens too are traced back to ancient times.” (Pausanias, 5.16.2-4)

That’s it. The grand total on what we know about the female counterpart to the ancient Olympics. Not one name of one actual winner in a competition that presumably occurred every four years for centuries.

The Olympics lasted through all of ancient Greek times and almost all of Roman times until Emperor Theodosius banned all pagan festivals. Presumably, the Heraea was shut down on the same rationale, though we don’t actually know that.

Naturally, sports did not go away. There were even a few short-lived attempts at competitions with the old name of Olympics.

Reinventing the Olympic Games

The story of the modern Olympics begins in the 19th century when Europe had rediscovered how cool the ancient world was. A French man named Pierre de Coubertin was particularly impressed with the ancient Olympics, and the idea of everyone stopping the endless wars to come together for some honest, principled competition and celebration of human achievement. It wasn’t just because people like sports. It was part of the peace movement. It was idealistic.

In fact, Coubertin was over-romanticizing the ancient Olympics. In ancient times the Olympic Truce was a thing, but it was not always honored, and the competitions were not always principled. But the idea was inspiring, and Coubertin convinced enough people that he pulled off the first modern Olympics in 1896. It was hosted in Athens, Greece, which was very appropriate.

The 1896 Olympics were a success, more or less. The athletes numbered 241. All of them were either European or North American. Also all of them were male (Goldblatt, 45-46).

Coubertin had many great ideas, but his views on women were complicated. In some ways, he was a progressive. He made statements on gender equality, approved of allowing divorce, and promoted better career opportunities for women. But he also had concerns about women as athletes. Some of his concerns were phrased in the language of protecting women. For example:

“If some women want to play football or box, let them, provided that the event takes place without spectators, because the spectators who flock to such competitions are not there to watch a sport” (quoted in Wilant).

Coubertin was sadly right that there was a safety issue here, but it’s even more sad that he (and so many others) thought that the best solution was to forbid women to play, rather than to demand better behavior from spectators.

Some of Coubertin’s statements betray a more personal animosity. For example, when he said that a feminine Olympian would be “impractical, uninteresting, ungainly and […] improper” (quoted in Wilant).

Despite such comments, Coubertin did not prevent women from entering the 1900 Olympics. These games were held in Paris as part of the World’s Fair. This was supposed to mean increased visibility and crowds. But it didn’t work out that way. The World’s Fair already had sporting events planned, and its organizers were not really on board with having the Olympics. They dropped the word “Olympics” from many of the events, so it was (and still is) unclear which events were part of the Olympics and which were part of the World’s Fair. Also, the events were stretched out over five and half months. No media frenzy lasts that long. Not ever. So the result was actually decreased visibility for the Olympics.

Still, there were three women who took home a first-place finish.

Hélène de Pourtalès: Olympic Champion

The first female Olympic champion so was the Countess Hélène de Pourtalès. Many of my sources on Olympic history completely overlook her, even if they’ve agreed that her event was part of the Olympics. That’s because she was a team member, and so her name isn’t instantly noticeable on the lists of winners. The listed winner is the name of her yacht, the Lérina, from Switzerland.

Hélène was Swiss by marriage, but American by birth. She was born in 1868 as Helen Barbey, daughter of a railroad tycoon and the heiress of a tobacco empire. Like many other rich American debutantes of the Gilded Age, Helen looked to Europe for a groom and a title. In her case, she bagged the Count Hermann Alexandre de Pourtalès, from an important Swiss family.

On May 22, 1900, they entered their yacht into the Olympics with a 3-person crew: the Count, the Countess, and a nephew named Bernard. This makes Hélène the very first female Olympian (at least in the modern age). They took gold in their first race and silver in their second, which makes Hélène the first female Olympic champion as well, though I’m not sure if she got a medal. Many winners didn’t in the 1900 Olympics. They won prizes, but the prizes weren’t necessarily gold medals. (I had to revise the title of this episode once I figured that out.)

The women who competed in events that were specifically labeled as women’s events got a little more notice as competitors. There were two sports with designated women’s divisions: tennis and golf.

Charlotte Cooper: Olympic Champion

Charlotte Cooper was from Middlesex, England, born in 1870. She was already a champion tennis player. She won at Wimbledon several times, plus dozens of other competitions before entering the Olympics in Paris. Across several days in July 1900, Charlotte defeated her French, American, and Bohemian competition to win first in the Ladies’ Singles (Mallon, 208, 211). In the mixed doubles, she and Reginald Doherty defeated all the opposition (Mallon, 212).

Margaret Abbott: Olympic Champion

The woman who won the Ladies’ Golf tournament was Margaret Abbott. Margaret was already a world traveler, having been born in India and raised in the US. In 1900, she was attending art school in France. She was learning from the best, people like Edward Degas and Auguste Rodin.

While she was there, she saw a golf tournament advertised and she knew she was good at golf, so she entered and on October 4, she won. That was all there was to it for her. She never even knew it was part of the Olympics. The word wasn’t used in her presence, nor did the Olympics have the name recognition and prestige that they have now.

Margaret also entered and won a French championship before she moved back to the US, got married, and lived a pretty normal life. That life included golf only casually and intermittently.

It was only decades after her death in 1955 that sports historian Paula Welch tracked down Margaret Abbott’s name and then her living relatives. Welch asked Margaret’s son if he realized his mother was the first American woman to win at the Olympics?

He had not known, and he was astounded. Presumably Margaret would have been too (Fox, NYT).

I’m not sure Welch was right that Margaret was the first American woman to win at the Olympics. Hélène de Pourtalès was born American. She just didn’t compete for the US. So either Paula Welch didn’t know about Hélène, which is possible. Or she didn’t count her as American, which is also possible. Or maybe Welch didn’t count the yacht races as part of the Olympics. As I said, it’s all very confusing.

The Later Olympics

Besides yachting, tennis, and golf, women are known to have competed in the 1900 Olympics in croquet (Mallon, 75-77). Also in equestrian events and ballooning. But they didn’t win, and not everyone agrees that these were Olympic competitions.

And that was a wrap for the 1900 Olympics. Coubertin was dissatisfied with them, not because of the women, but because of the World’s Fair. Nevertheless, the 1904 Olympics were held in St Louis, along with the World’s Fair. Women’s participation actually went down. The only women’s event was in archery, and only six women competed (IOC, St Louis 1904). But from then on out, women’s participation began a slow (very, slow) rise. In 1924, 135 women made up 4.4% of the total number of athletes. One of these women was Gertrude Ederle, an American teenager who took gold as part of the women’s freestyle relay team. She would later go on to be the first woman to swim the English channel, and the subject of this month’s bonus episode for subscribers. Available on Patreon or Substack.

The 1952 games in Helsinki were the first where women made up even 10% of the athletes. It was 1976 in Montreal before women made up 20% of the athletes. It was 2004 in Athens before women made up 40% of the athletes. It was 2024 in Paris before women made up 49% of the athletes, an achievement that the International Olympic Committee declared gender equality (IOC). I’m not disagreeing, I’m just a little curious at their projected ratio for 2028 in Los Angeles. They are expecting 51% of the athletes to be female. I wondering how they know.

I’m also curious what Pierre de Coubertin would say if he saw—just to throw out a couple of recent superstars—Alysa Liu smile through her fabulously golden free skate this past February or Simone Biles defy gravity on the floor and the balance beam and the vault and the uneven bars. You just have to wonder whether Coubertin could have watched those events and said the words “impractical, uninteresting, ungainly and […] improper”?

I surely hope not.

I have a special thank you today to Kimi who signed up as a supporter on Patreon. Supporters like Kimi keep the show running for everyone, and as my thank you, can get bonus content like that special episode on Gertrude Ederle. If you’re able to contribute as well, Subscribers on Patreon and Substack can get the various bonuses. If you’d rather do a one time donation on Buy Me a Coffee, that’s much appreciated too.

Selected Sources

Bobrick, Benson. A Passion for Victory. New York: Random House Children’s Books, 2012.

Dillon, Matthew. “Did Parthenoi Attend the Olympic Games? Girls and Women Competing, Spectating, and Carrying out Cult Roles at Greek Religious Festivals.” Hermes 128, no. 4 (2000): 457–80. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4477389.

Fox, Margalit. “Margaret Abbott, an Unwitting Olympic Trailblazer.” The New York Times, March 8, 2018, sec. Obituaries. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/obituaries/overlooked-margaret-abbott.html.

Goldblatt, David. The Games: A Global History of the Olympics. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016.

Guttmann, Allen. The Olympics : A History of the Modern Games. Urbana And Chicago: University Of Illinois Press, 2002.

International Olympic Committee (IOC). “Factsheet: Women in the Olympic Movement.” IOC, June 27, 2025. https://stillmed.olympics.com/media/Documents/Olympic-Movement/Factsheets/Women-in-the-Olympic-Movement.pdf.

IOC. “Charlotte COOPER.” Olympics.com, 2025. https://www.olympics.com/en/athletes/charlotte-cooper.

Mallon, Bill. The 1900 Olympic Games: Results for All Competitors in All Events, with Commentary. United States: McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers, 2015.

Spears, B. (1984). A Perspective of the History of Women’s Sport in Ancient Greece. Journal of Sport History, 11(2), 32–47. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43609020

———. “St. Louis 1904 Double National Round 60y 50y Women Results – Olympic Archery.” Olympics.com, 2026. https://www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/st-louis-1904/results/archery/double-national-round-60y-50y-women.

Olympedia. “Charlotte Cooper.” http://www.olympedia.org. Accessed May 2, 2026. https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/45.

———. “Hélène, Countess de Pourtalès.” http://www.olympedia.org. Accessed May 1, 2026. https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/61789.

———. “Margaret Abbott.” http://www.olympedia.org. Accessed May 2, 2026. https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/18138.

Pausanias. Description of Greece. Translated by W. H. S. Jones. Harvard University Press, 1918. https://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias1A.html.

Wilant, Natalia Camps Y , and George Hirthler. “The Rationale behind Coubertin’s Opposition to Women Competing in the Olympic Games.” Olympics.com, 2016. https://www.olympics.com/ioc/pierre-de-coubertin/the-rationale-behind-coubertins-opposition-to-women-competing-in-the-olympic-games.