Lina Radke in 1928 (© IMAGO)
Plaque name: Lina Radke (GER)
Location: Olympisch Stadion 2, 1076 DE Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Plaque awarded: 22/07/2021
Reason: Plaque Category – Legend
Karoline ‘Lina’ Radke-Batschauer (GER)
18 October 1903 – 14 February 1983
The inaugural women’s Olympic 800m champion in 1928.
The International Women's Sports Federation (FSFI) reached an agreement with the IOC and World Athletics (then the IAAF) to stage women’s athletics events in the Olympic Games for the first time in 1928.
The accepted FSFI world record for 800m coming into those 1928 Games was held by Radke with a time of 2:19.6.
In the final in Amsterdam, Radke took the lead with 300 metres to go and finished with a three-metre victory over Japan’s versatile Kinue Hitomi. Radke’s time improved her own world record to 2:16.8.
Despite newspaper stories of athletes finishing the race distressed, the truth was that just one collapsed afterwards. However, the resulting public uproar caused the immediate removal of the women’s 800m event from the Olympic programme. It was not to return until Rome 1960!
During Radke’s outstanding career she set six ratified world records at distances from 800m to 1200m, which included the 1000m mark which she set in 1930.