Why they rank here
Voted the IAAF Female Athlete of the Twentieth Century, Blankers-Koen produced one of the greatest single Olympics of all time. At the 1948 London Games, a 30-year-old mother of two — mocked in the press as too old to compete — won four gold medals in the 100m, 200m, 80m hurdles and 4x100m relay, the most by any woman at a single Olympics. The tragedy is how much more she might have won: competition rules limited her to four events, yet she simultaneously held world records in the high jump and long jump, and at one point held world records in as many as six different disciplines at once. The Second World War erased what should have been her peak years, from age 22 to 28. That she returned afterward to dominate sprints, hurdles and jumps simultaneously marks her as perhaps the most versatile woman the sport has seen.
Career profile
Each bar shows how this athlete compares with the strongest in our all-time list for that metric.