There have been countless American women who have dominated at the Olympics over the years, but did you know the first American woman to win a gold medal at the Games was a golfer?
Her name was Margaret Abbott, and she won the women’s golf competition in Paris in 1900, the second-ever Olympic Games and the first to include golf.
There’s a slew of subplots this story, including that Abbott never knew she ever won a gold medal.
The 1900 Games were held in Paris, where the American Abbott was living at the time with her well-to-do family. Those Olympics, however, coincided with the World’s Fair and Olympic events were spread out over five months. They were also massively under-promoted and Abbott was among the competitors who never knew they were actually participating in the Games. Abbott, who was awarded an antique porcelain bowl embellished with gold, told family and friends she had won an exhibition.
Further details about the event, according to usagolf.org:
The women’s golf competition consisted of nine holes that ranged in distance from 68 to 230 yards and included 10 participants, all dressed in long skirts and hats, as was customary for female golfers back then. At 22 years old, Margaret was a fierce competitor and shot 47 to win, while her mother Mary finished with a 65, tying for seventh place.
That’s right, Abbott competed alongside her mother.
Margaret Abbott was later married to Finley Dunne and they had four children. She died on June 10, 1955, at age 76. It was another 20 years before a researcher put all the pieces together on this saga.
“It’s not every day that you learn your mother was an Olympic champion, 80-odd years after the fact,” Philip Dunne, her son, wrote in a Golf Digest article in 1984.