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The Legend of Maud: Chris McKenzie and the Birth of Women's Track and Field - Part One - By Marc Bloom

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DyeStat.com   Apr 4th 2017, 4:00pm
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Sixty Years Ago a Running Renegade Fought the AAU for Women's Right to Run Events Longer Than 200 Meters.
The Rest is History.

The Remarkable Story of Chris McKenzie, 85, of Long Island, Whose Courageous Stand Led to Gender Equity in Track & Field, Cross Country and Road Racing

First of Three Parts

By Marc Bloom for DyeStat 

Maud1 

She was born Maud Slemon in London in 1931, the second oldest of five girls.

“I’m a cockney,” she says. She lost her three brothers—one died in childbirth, two soon after. During the War, she wore the same yellow and gray coat every day and slept in knickers. She had no pajamas.  

The family home was destroyed several times by German bombing. During the blitz, the Slemons moved from shelter to shelter. At times, they crashed with family members: two bedrooms for more than a dozen people. They scraped together meals from food rations.

Raids by the Luftwaffe put her school into chaos. The Germans dropped bombs for kids to pick up. They shot from the air indiscriminately. One day, when by chance Maud was home for lunch, a number of her classmates were killed in the schoolyard around the corner. Maud heard the artillery fire.

Her father, George, suffered a brain injury from the shelling and couldn’t find work. Once, the family squatted in a vacant vicarage. To obtain entry, her father broke the lock and was arrested. He spent the night in jail. But the vicarage would prove fateful when Maud thought all was lost.

Maud was a curious child. Before the War, Maud had her hands in everything, what little there was. At age 5, she was drawn to dance. The graceful, athletic movements mesmerized her. She begged her mother, Kate, for a few pence to take a Saturday morning ballet class. Her mother resisted, saying they could not afford it.

Finally, Kate relented. “I was always dancing,” said Maud.

Dance gave Maud a bit of freedom. Her father preached restrictive female roles to his daughters. They should be this or that when they grow up. Maud had a mind of her own. She was impressed that her father, with little formal education, had picked up piano. Maud developed a will to succeed.

In ballet class, she was awed by a girl who could do a pirouette while standing on a chair. Amazed by the girl’s courage and control, Maud absorbed the display in a deep, affecting way.

“That girl — her name was Patty — was everything to me,” she said.

Maud decided to try the risky move herself. She practiced it in “mum’s kitchen” until marshaling the confidence to give it a go in class. Attempting the spinning feat on a chair at the school, Maud fell and came home limping. She tried to hide her limp because a doctor’s visit cost a shilling, or 12 pence. There was also the cost of a bus.

Finally, her mum caught on. The limping Maud was taken to the doctor and then to a hospital. At the hospital, she was happy to get her first pair of pajamas to wear. Maud was diagnosed with osteomyelitis, a rare but serious bone infection, in her right leg. Her untreated wound from the fall may have facilitated the infection. She had to wear a brace from her waist to her ankle and spent several weeks in the hospital being cared for in her new P.J.s.

This was 1936. Doctors instructed Maud, then 5, to cease all activity and told her she would never be able to walk without the brace. The idea of running one day was inconceivable. Once home, Maud limped around, went to the hospital for further treatment and wondered what would become of her.

Maud2Maud would wear the brace into her teenage years. During the War, while her family squatted at the spacious vicarage, another family moved in. A friend of that second family, Anne Stone, got to know Maud. She watched her stumble around with the brace. Anne, then in her late 30s, had been a distinguished runner in the 400 and 800 meters in the 1920s. Anne had twice been second in the 400 at the British championships, and her best 800 times were close to the world record.

It was during Anne’s heyday, at the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, when the historic debacle in the women’s 800 meters occurred. This was the first Olympics for women’s track and field. Women were given three running events—the 100, 800 and 4x100 relay—plus the high jump and discus throw. There had been strenuous objection among Olympic officials to including the women’s 800; some did not want any women’s events at all. At the time, the father of the modern Olympics, Pierre de Coubertin, was quoted as saying, “As to the inclusion of women to the Games, I remain strongly against it.”

The 800 was considered an experiment. Many in the track firmament were rooting for the event to somehow fail.

What happened that August 2nd day in Amsterdam in 1928 would be debated to this day and define women’s running for decades, particularly in the United States. Lina Radke of Germany won the gold medal in a world record 2:16.8. The lone American in the nine-woman final, Florence McDonald, placed sixth in a U.S. record 2:22.6.

But what captured the world’s attention were news reports—with photos as “evidence”—describing many of the finalists collapsing on the track in exhaustion. Never mind that exhausted Olympic runners would be considered normal. These were women. However, it was learned years later that the women in the 800 had not collapsed. The accounts, photos included, were a conspiratorial fabrication designed to keep women in their place. It was the ultimate “fake news” of its day (described in greater detail in Part Two of this story to come).

But the damage, at the time, had been done. So much so that The New York Times concluded, “This distance makes too great a call on feminine strength.”

U.S. track officials agreed and from that point on American women would not be allowed to run any distance longer than 200 meters or 220 yards. While women in many other countries continued running longer races like the 800, at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, the only women’s running events were the 100, 80-meter hurdles and 4x100 relay.

There were no British women in the ill-fated Amsterdam 800. The enlightened British did not send a women’s team to Amsterdam in protest over how few women’s events there were on the program.

Anne Stone had not forgotten the controversy when she befriended Maud in the early ‘40s. In Maud, Anne saw something of herself: the questioning girl who wanted more than society would allow. With her background in athletics, Anne embarked on a program of physical therapy to build up Maud’s muscles and help her walk. It took three years but, in 1947 when she was 16, Maud could walk without the brace.

And then, encouraged by Anne, Maud would run. Even at first, she flowed with a captivating ease. With Anne’s coaching, Maud grew ready for competition. Anne took her to local cross-country races, 2 or 3 miles, distances then denied American women. In her first race, Maud placed sixth and won a medal. “Anne was so happy,” she said.

Thus, two women who’d defied convention had joined forces. Maud did not get support at home. Her father disapproved of her “running around in shorts” and never once saw her compete. When Maud could speak of nothing but Anne, her mum complained, “Stop this Anne business!” It could not be stopped. Runner and coach were aloft.

There were no running teams at school. Maud ran for a club, Mitchum AC. She kept improving and was selected to represent County Surrey in a cross-country meet over Christmas break, 1947, in Scotland.

By this time, Maud, 16, could say, “Running meant everything to me.” There was no limit to what she could achieve, or experience. For her first big race, Maud traveled with her Surrey squad by train to the meeting in Scotland 400 miles away. Anne could not make the trip.

The race was authentic cross-country with the terrain’s natural obstacles to negotiate. As the race unfolded, Maud was well positioned up front as the field encountered a stream. Watching her opposition tip-toe on stones to avoid getting wet, Maud said to herself, “The heck with that,” and bolted right through the water and into the lead. She didn’t realize she was ahead and was shocked at the finish to learn that she’d won.

Grasping her gold medal, Maud returned home, anxious to show it off proudly to Anne. Upon arrival, Maud was too late. Anne, 43, had died the night before of cancer. She’d kept the illness to herself. Maud vowed to run and race for Anne, to set goals and win medals for the woman who’d led her to appreciate the wonders of running.

Maud3In the late ‘40s, after the War, Maud’s family lived in the London suburb of Carshalton. Maud trained on the town’s clay track—later, in the 1970s, named after her in a dedication ceremony she attended with family members.

Soon Maud began running for another club, Selsonia Ladies, coached by Reg Bale, Anne’s widower. One day a sports writer, watching Maud run, asked Bale about her. Bale was embarrassed to say “Maud” because he felt it was not an athletic name. Instead he said Chris—Maud’s middle name was Christina. And, just like that, Maud became Chris.

The change was fine with Chris, who always disliked the name Maud. In fact, she wanted to change her name legally to Chloe because it sounded “posh.” Her father balled her out when she gave him the papers to sign. He tore them up and threatened to send her to an “asylum.”

When years later Chris came to the United States to marry the American runner Gordon McKenzie, she became Chris McKenzie, the firebrand who would challenge the AAU and help change the course of women’s running. Chris had seen women abroad thrive on middle distance and cross-country and set about trying to get the U.S. to give American women those same opportunities—starting with the 440 and 880—which had been denied for decades.

These were the events her beloved Anne Stone ran in the ‘20s. In the timeline of women’s running evolution—indeed, revolution—it is compelling to note 60 years later, in 2017, that the current young women’s superstars, Sydney McLaughlin and Samantha Watson, represent those very events, the 400 and 800.

Part of Chris’ early protest was to enter “men’s” road races, despite threats of a lifetime ban by the AAU. Other women picked up on the idea, and this year’s Boston Marathon, on April 17, will commemorate the 50th anniversary of Kathrine Switzer’s ballyhooed 1967 Boston break-in when officials tried to shove her off the course.

In the volatile political climate of 2017, women continue to be under siege by powerful forces intent on controlling their lives. They have responded with movements like the Women’s March on Washington, and elsewhere, on Jan. 21, and with International Women’s Day on March 8.

With these pivotal times, it’s important to remember ground-breaking women like Chris McKenzie, whose story is being told here for the first time. I first learned about Chris from her son Adam, a track coach on Long Island. After that, I met with Chris a number of times—at her home in Great Neck, at the New York Armory—to draw out the significant events in her life, on and off the track.

On one occasion when it mattered most, Chris, at 25, dared U.S. track authorities to hold her and other women back. Maybe it’s not decorous or feminist to think of it this way, but Chris’ moment of truth in an audacious show of strength against the belligerent AAU was referred to with reverence as “the Bikini Run down Fifth Avenue.” 

#

Coming Wednesday, Part Two

Photo Captions (Photos courtesy of McKenzie Family Collection)

Air Lift (Top): In the late ‘40s, teenage Chris McKenzie, aloft, works out with a Selsonia Ladies Club teammate in London, in preparation for a cross-country race in Scotland. Chris won with aggressive tactics that overwhelmed the opposition. 

Picture Perfect (Middle): Chris, left, and a teammate training in unison on a winter’s day in London around 1950. Chris did a mix of distance runs and intervals, comparable to the standard methods of today.

Winning Habit (Bottom): Chris, in the early ‘50s, after winning a race, seen with her coach Reg Bale, and a teammate. Soon after, Chris started working with another coach, Arthur Wint, the 1948 Olympic 400-meter gold medalist from Jamaica. 

 


Marc Bloom has received more than 20 journalism and lifetime achievement awards for his writing about track and field, cross-country and road running in a career spanning more than 50 years. He currently volunteers as an assistant cross-country coach at Princeton High School in New Jersey.



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PatriciaJoyce54
My mum's cousin
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