Every 4 years, the very best of the very best of the very best in the wide world of sports compete for the gold. Nearly every nation is represented in this titanic tournament. Last time I tackled the Olympics, I focused on the 100M Dash. I ‘m stretching my horizons into gymnastics with…

Olympic Special Vol. 2: Vera Caslavska and Agnes Keleti

VERA CASLAVSKA: 1960 – Rome, 1964 – Tokyo, 1968 – Mexico City

Vera in 1967.

Mid-way through World War II on May 3, 1942, Prague’s Caslavska family introduced a baby girl. They named her Vera. From an early age, it was clear that Vera was a natural athlete. Initially, she started in dance, followed by figure skating. At 15 however, she switched to gymnastics. Like with the previous 2 sports, she dominated. Part of this was her and part was her instructor, Eva Bosakova (1952 – Helsinki, 1956 – Melbourne, and 1960 – Rome). Bosakova was already a multiple medal holder in both the Olympics and World Championships.

After a year or so of training Vera competed alongside Bosakova in 1959 at the European Championship. She won her first (of many) gold medals in the balance beams but slipped up on the uneven bars leaving her in 8^th. The team won the silver medal. This success continued into the Olympics in Rome where she won the silver in the team category again. She continued to compete and exponentially became the top gymnast of her era. In the World and European Championships and the Olympics, she won numerous gold and silver medals. Things changed around the 1968 Olympics however.

January 5, 1968, Antonin Novotny was officially replaced by Alexander Dubcek as 1^st Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Dubcek’s goal was to create, “Communism with a Human Face.” In turn, he introduced more Democratic leaning policies and expanding people’s freedoms like speech. The Soviets were not pleased so they invaded Czechoslovakia with 600,000 soldiers and help from other Warsaw Pact nations. Vera was in support of the new reforms and signed the protest manifesto, “Two Thousand Words,” by Ludvik Vaculik. All this happened a few months before the Mexico City Olympics that fall (seriously, the 1968 summer games were held in October that year).

Vera was in trouble so her fled to the mountains. Similarly to Rocky in Rocky IV, she trained using the natural world, but out of necessity not because of manliness. After 3 weeks, she got word that the Czech allowed her to participate in the Mexico City games again. It was during these games that she became the first and only Olympian to ever win a medal in every gymnastics event. In addition to this, she refused to observe the rising of the Czech and Soviet flags when she tied for the gold in the Floor Exercise with Larisa Petrik. Many took notice, including the Soviets.

Around this time, she married Josef Odlozil, a fellow Czech Olympian. Back home in Prague, things changed. The government was suspicious of Caslavska and barred her from federal jobs for her protests and politics.

She divorced Josef in 1987. 3 years later the Communists lost power and she finally publicly regarded as a hero of the people. Also wasn’t barred from federal jobs. They had several children. One of them, Martin, stabbed his father in a dance club in 1993. Josef died. Martin was sent to prison. Vera focused on keeping her family together after this tragic event. She still resides in Prague today and lives a private life.

AGNES KELTEI: 1948 – London, 1952 – Helsinki, 1956 – Melbourne

Hungry’s Agnes Keleti came from humble beginnings, she was born to a Jewish family on January 9, 1921. Like other future Olympians she was attracted to sports early on. A natural gymnast, she excelled at the VAC Jewish Sports Club quickly. Her father, Ferencs, wanted both his daughters involved in sports. He was a lifelong athlete. Her mother complimented their father’s push for athletics with academics. Thanks to her, Agnes was a great student, cellist, and singer.

At 16, she won her first national championship. By the end of her professional career, there were 9 more national championships. She was on her way to the Olympics but World War II broke out. Hunngry was left out of it for awhile until Germany invaded. Agnes managed to get papers under the guise of a Christian woman named Piroshka. She worked for a Nazi-sympathizing family as a maid for the rest of the war. Her father was taken to Auschwitz. Her mother and sister luckily escaped thanks to the Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg (he was responsible for saving thousands of Hungarian Jews). By the end of the war the only family left was her mother and sister.

Agnes doing a split at 91.

Reunited with her family, Agnes resumed where her career left off. She won more national titles over the next few years and nearly made it to the London Olympic. 2 days before they began, she injured herself but recovered in time to compete in European and World Championships. In the Helsinki games, she became the oldest female gymnast to win an Olympian medal at 31. She won 4 medals in total. That record was broken again at the Melbourne games with 6 more medals. At 35, she set the record (again) for oldest female gymnast to win an Olympic medal.

The Soviet Union invaded Hungry during the Melbourne games. Instead of return home, she and the other Hungarians remained down under. She received political asylum to reside in Israel, where she still lives. In 1959, she married Robert Biro, a fellow Hungarian Jew that escaped the Soviets. They have 2 sons, Rafael and Daniel. In Israel, she become a corner stone in the establishment of Israeli Gymnastics. She ended up teaching at Tel Aviv University for years.

Agnes is the second most accomplished Jewish Olympic athlete with 10 medals, right behind Mark Spitz’ 11.

Not only did these women set world records, they managed to thwart both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union from destroying them mentally and physically. They are extraordinary women that need to be remembered and celebrated.

Sources

http://www.ighof.com/honorees/1998_Vera_Caslavska.php

https://www.olympic.org/vera-caslavska

http://brooklynquarterly.org/personal-protest-at-the-olympics/

http://thebiography.us/en/caslavska-vera

http://www.drmirkin.com/histories-and-mysteries/vera-caslavska-marriage-of-two-great-olympic-athletes.html

http://www.radio.cz/en/section/curraffrs/czechoslovak-sports-legend-vera-caslavska-celebrates-60th-birthday

http://web.archive.org/web/20040508164234/http://www.intlgymnast.com/events/2004/europeans/champions/caslavska.html

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-04-05/sports/sp-900_1_prague-spring

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/prague-spring-begins-in-czechoslovakia

http://www.dhr.history.vt.edu/modules/eu/mod05_1968/evidence_detail_13.html 2,000 Words

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dykBBhaoczg

http://www.lib.umich.edu/soviet-invasion-czechoslovakia/pg1.html

http://www.gymn.ca/gymnasticgreats/wag/keleti.htm

http://esra-magazine.com/blog/post/agnes-keleti

http://www.jewishpress.com/sections/jewess-press/impact-women-history/agnes-keleti-the-foundation-stone-of-gymnastics-in-israel/2012/07/22/

http://www.ighof.com/honorees/2002_Agnes_Keleti.php

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/keleti-agnes

http://www.jewishsports.net/BioPages/AgnesKeleti(Klein).htm

Ada Lovelace, 1815 – 1852

We wouldn’t have computer technology today if it wasn’t for Augusta Ada King aka Ada Lovelace. Her childhood was one of great privilege and prestige. She was the only (legitimate) child of George Gordon Byron better known to history as Lord Byron. When she was still very small her mother, Lady Anne Isabella Byron, separated from Lord Byron. She was given full custody of her child. Lady Byron didn’t want her daughter to end up like her father so she had her tutored primarily in mathematics and music. She was a natural. Ada was further encouraged to pursue math from Mary Somerville, a prominent mathematician. A few years later at one of Ms. Somerville’s dinner parties she heard Charles Babbage idea for a calculating engine. From this point Ada and Charles became lifelong friends. Ada promptly started helping with the calculating engine. They helped each other with various projects but had different ideas for the calculating engine. Charles just wanted to have it calculate and that’s about it. He had prior attempted to invent the difference engine, which he didn’t finish. Ada wanted this new calculating engine to basically be a computer as we know them today. She is considered one of the first, if not the first, computer programmers. She and Charles worked on 2 different engines, one is calculating and the other is an analytical engine. These were not finished unfortunately.

Ada married William King, Count of Lovelace, in 1835. They had 3 children. Throughout her life she suffered from various illnesses and passed from cancer at 37.

Eliza Frances Andrews, 1840 – 1931

Eliza is known as a prestigious writer but also was active in the science community. She was born in an upper class Georgia family. She was privileged and encouraged to be educated. After graduating from the LaGrange College in 1857, she wrote for several newspapers. Post-Civil War her family’s lost nearly everything. Eliza chose to remain independent and not get married. She became a full-time writer and built a legendary career.

This whole time she was interested in botany. It wasn’t until the 1900s that she finally made her lifelong love a career move. She wrote several textbooks on the subject and submitted thousands of botanical specimens for many studies. This provided her a comfortable living for the rest of her life.

Sofia Kovalevskaya, 1850 – 1891

Sofia didn’t live long but became one of the top mathematicians of all time. She was born into a minor Russian noble family. She had the nickname, “Little Sparrow” as a child. A love of math was introduced very early. Her father had calculus notes in place of wall paper around her nursery, this planted the seed. She taught herself trigonometry when she read a physics book and didn’t fully understand it. Her neighbor, Professor Tyrtov, encouraged her to continue on this path. He talked her father into allowing her more education. So Sofia went to St. Petersburg for school. After graduating she wanted to attend college and most universities at the time barred women. The nearest one was in Switzerland and required its female students to be married. Sofia married Vladimir Kovalevkaya just to attend college.  After graduating she continued tutoring under the best mathematicians. She became the first woman to receive a Ph. D in Math in 1874 from the University of Gottingen. She wrote 3 papers to get it. They were on the following topics, partial differential equations, Abelian integrals, and Saturn’s rings.

It took 6 years to get a job in math. Even though she had the best mathematicians supporting her, no one wanted to hire a woman for a math position. She taught math for elementary school girls. Vladimir killed himself in 1883. The next year she became the first woman hired to a university chair seat in Europe. Her star rose over the next few years. She met and fell in love with Maxim Kovalevsky, a sociologist. They had a tumultuous affair for a few years. They split shortly after. She won the Prix Bordin, an international award for mathematical achievement, for her paper, On the Problem of the Rotation of a Solid Body about a Fixed Point. She died from the flu three years later.

Agnes Arber, 1879 – 1960

In the world of botany not many have left a mark quite like Agnes Arber. She was born in London to the Robertson family. Her father was an artist and taught her various techniques something that she later used in her books. Her science teacher, Edith Aitkin Arber, fostered a love of botany in young Agnes. She won a botany scholarship and met Ethel Sargent, a plant morphologist, who became a mentor and colleague. Agnes first published botanical work appeared in her school magazine in 1894. She continued working in botany and met fellow botanist, Edward Arber. They married in 1909. It was a happy marriage until he died suddenly in 1918.

Her first book, Their Origin and Evoluton, came out in 1912. This was a history of botany. She followed it up with Water Plants: A Study in Aquati Angiosperms, Monocotyledons: A Morphological, and many more after these. She switched from science to philosophy in her later years after her health started failing. She was the first female botanist in the Royal Society.

Vilma Hugonnai, 1847 – 1922

In the world of medicine, she’s a trailblazer. She was the first licensed female doctor in Hungry. Her journey was a rocky one but she broke though and made it easier for other women in medicine. She was born into a noble family. She had an interest in medicine early on. Her mother had tuberculous and as a result, Vilma only got to see her a few minutes a day. This was where an interest in medicine began. She married George Szilassy, who was 20 years her senior. She was 18 at the time. As a bored housewife she saw an ad to work in a medical faculty at the University of Zurich. She saw that women can work there. Vilma graduated as a surgeon in 1879. She was offered several jobs as a surgeon but women weren’t allowed to be doctors. However, women could be midwives. She was a midwife against the behest of her husband. They divorced and she remarried an art professor, Vince Wartha. She was an active midwife for years. Vince liked and encouraged her independence. At this time she becomes very active in the Women’s Movement. She is one of the founders of the Hungarian National Association for Women’s Education along with noted Hungarian feminist leader, Palne Veres. In 1895, it became legal for women to be licensed doctors. On May 14, 1897 she became the first licensed female doctor in Hungarian history. During World War I she worked in military hospitals and received honors for her work. She died from congestive heart failure in 1922.