Having read of the death of Fanny Blankers-Koen at the age of 85 it stirred up memories of great athletic meetings here in Dublin staged by the great Billy Morton.

Francina Koen was born in 1918 in the town of Baarn in Utrecht and became involved in athletics at an early stage. She adopted swimming as her first sport before switching to the track relatively late at 17.
She married Jan Blankers, who became her coach. He was a Dutch triple-jumper, who took part in the Olympic Games. She was developing into a very good athlete and took part in the Berlin Olympics in the high jump and 4 x 100 relay. She finished fifth in the high jump.

These were the Olympics just before the war and Jesse Owens of America was one of the stars of the games. The 1940 and 1944 Olympics were not held because of the outbreak of the Second World War.
While going training, she would cycle to the track bringing her children in a little trolley attached to her bike.

Fanny Blankers-Koen arrived in London in 1948 at the age of thirty when most athletes would be slowing down, to run in the Olympic games. At these games she ran a total of eleven races including heats and finals. She won them all and collected four gold medals. After eight gruelling days she left London with the moniker ‘Flying Housewife’ forever linked to her name.

Fanny Blankers-Koen was also a good high jump and long jumper and because in those days athletics were confined to compete in four events she might have won more medals. She also won European titles and a lot of national medals. She broke sixteen world records during her career.

Billy Morton, who was attached to Clonliffe Harriers, staged many international athletic and track cycling meetings and one of these meetings was immediately after the 1948 Olympics in London. I followed all these meeting and one of my great thrills was seeing Fanny Blankers-Koen equalling the 100 metres world record right here in our own backyard of Ringsend, Lansdowne Road.

Many stars of other countries travelled over from the Olympics of 1948 to compete, among them from Jamaica, Arthur Wint and McDonald Bailey. These two were part of a relay team who won at Lansdowne and their prize was a Raleigh bike each.