Little Wonder by Sasha Abramsky

Author:Sasha Abramsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2014-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Bull’s-Eye at the London Olympics

Dod training with teammates in the run-up to the 1908 London Olympics. Courtesy of Sally-Ann Dod, Dod family archives.

Lottie Dod was by now increasingly hobbled by sciatica. And yet, despite the pain, after she retired from top-level golf there would be one more sporting turn in the Little Wonder’s two decades in the spotlight.

Two years after she returned from America, impatient as ever for new conquests, Lottie Dod, living with her brothers in Newbury, a fifty-minute train journey from London’s Paddington station, more fully embraced a hobby in which she had partaken, on and off, since childhood: archery. In 1906, she joined the Welford Park Archers and began entering competitions. She was, as she had been in so many other sports, an instant success; shortly after she began serious training in archery, Dod won the grandiosely named Royal Toxophilite Society Ladies’ Day Gold Medal, beating out nearly one hundred other competitors.[1]

In the esoteric world of archery, Dod had truly hit her bull’s-eye. For the Royal Toxophilites, founded in 1781, with the then Prince of Wales and future King George IV as its patron, was the preeminent archery club in the country. In early tournaments, the king stamped his imprimatur on the events by personally handing out prizes.

For the few years that remained of Dod’s sporting career, it was archery that commanded her attention.

* * *

The final act in that extraordinary public sporting career took place in 1908. That year, the thirty-six-year-old turned up as a member of England’s Olympic team at the summer games in London.

By 1908, Edwardian-era England was a political tinderbox: Suffragettes were becoming more vocal, Irish independence movements were pushing Ireland toward full-blown civil conflict, and socialists and liberals in Britain were campaigning for important social reforms such as unemployment insurance, the eight-hour workday, and pensions. Many of these proposals would be implemented in the 1909/10 budget, a hugely important document in British political history known as “the people’s budget.”

Dod, who seems to have remained scrupulously above—or outside—the political protests, simply continued doing what she did best: proving, through her sports accomplishments, that women were every bit the equal of men. Yet, political or not, as Britain’s most acclaimed female athlete, Lottie Dod could hardly help but be caught up in the controversy about whether or not to let women compete in London’s Olympic Games. She also couldn’t help but become even more of an advertisement for those seeking to expand athletic possibilities for young women around the world. Indeed, in early August, following the conclusion of the Games, the Pittsburgh Press would report that the grande dame of society figures, Mrs. John Jacob Astor herself, had been avidly following the women’s archery contest, of which Dod was a part, and had now pledged to bring the sport to Newport, Rhode Island, summer vacation spot of the East Coast’s rich and famous.[2]

For the female athletes of the 1908 Olympics, it had been a long and difficult journey. The first of the modern Olympiads, in 1896 in Athens, had featured not a single female competitor.

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