Speaker 1: Try to imagine this. You're sixteen years old and you
Speaker 1: win Olympic gold in track and field. Three years later,
Speaker 1: you're in a horrific plane crash. They think you're dead,
Speaker 1: but despite permanent injuries, you come back to win another gold.
Speaker 1: Five years later, I'm Patty Steele, beating life and death
Speaker 1: odds to take home the gold. That's next on the backstory.
Speaker 1: The backstory is back. Goda admit, it's pretty amazing to
Speaker 1: watch Olympic athletes compete when you know the incredibly hard
Speaker 1: work and skill it takes to get there. But it's
Speaker 1: also something more. It's this determination to never give up.
Speaker 1: Nobody has embodied that mindset more than Elizabeth Robinson, known
Speaker 1: as Betty. She was born in nineteen eleven in Riverdale, Illinois.
Speaker 1: She loves sports, but in those days, very few women
Speaker 1: were all that involved in that world. So how did
Speaker 1: she go on to win gold as a teenager. Well,
Speaker 1: one afternoon, she was leaving her high school and trying
Speaker 1: to catch her train home. She took off like the wind.
Speaker 1: Her science teacher, Charles Price, was headed for the same train,
Speaker 1: and while he was blown away by her speed, he thought,
Speaker 1: she's never going to make that train. You know that feeling.
Speaker 1: But once on board, he was shocked when she sat
Speaker 1: down right next to him. Turns out that teacher Charles Price,
Speaker 1: was a former athlete and the coach of the school's
Speaker 1: track team. He decided he wanted to try to test
Speaker 1: her speed and asked her to meet up with him
Speaker 1: the next day. After testing, he saw the makings of
Speaker 1: a star. He instantly invited her to join the boys team,
Speaker 1: since there was no girls track team at her school
Speaker 1: in those days. Betty knew she was fast, but had
Speaker 1: never thought about competing. She said, I had no idea
Speaker 1: that women even ran back then. Through pure talent and
Speaker 1: a bit of coaching, Betty ran her first official race
Speaker 1: on March thirtieth, nineteen twenty eight. She was just sixteen
Speaker 1: years old. It was an indoor meet, and she finished
Speaker 1: second to Helen Filkey, the US one hundred meter record holder.
Speaker 1: They ran the sixty yard dash. At her next race,
Speaker 1: two months later, she ran outdoors in the one hundred
Speaker 1: meter race and beat Pilkey. She also unofficially equalled the
Speaker 1: world record. So get this. Just four months after her
Speaker 1: first ever race, she headed to the nineteen twenty eight
Speaker 1: Olympics in Amsterdam. The first Games where the Olympics allowed
Speaker 1: women to compete in track and field. It turns out
Speaker 1: she was the only US athlete to qualify for the
Speaker 1: one hundred meter final. In just her third ever one
Speaker 1: hundred meter race, Betty beat the competition and equalled the
Speaker 1: world record of twelve point two seconds. To this day,
Speaker 1: she is the youngest athlete ever to win Olympic gold
Speaker 1: in the one hundred meter. On top of that, she
Speaker 1: brought home silver with the four by one hundred meter
Speaker 1: relay team. She talked about winning that first gold in
Speaker 1: an interview sixty years later, saying, I can remember breaking
Speaker 1: the tape, but I wasn't sure that I'd won. It
Speaker 1: was so close. But then my friends in the stands
Speaker 1: jumped over the railing and came down and put their
Speaker 1: arms around me, and then I knew I'd won. Sixteen.
Speaker 1: Bringing home the gold from the Olympics a massive parade
Speaker 1: given in her honor when she arrived back in Chicago.
Speaker 1: You'd think that was kind of the apex of her
Speaker 1: athletic career. Right, Not even close. She aimed to head
Speaker 1: to the nineteen thirty two Olympics in Los Angeles, and
Speaker 1: she went to Northwestern University to get a physical education degree,
Speaker 1: hoping to become a coach at the nineteen thirty six Olympics.
Speaker 1: But all that changed in the blink of an eye
Speaker 1: on June twenty eighth, nineteen thirty one. It was a
Speaker 1: year ahead of the thirty two Games, and Betty was
Speaker 1: the hot favorite for gold. On that June day, she
Speaker 1: wanted to distract herself from all the training, and she
Speaker 1: decided to go on an airplane tour with her cousin, Will,
Speaker 1: who was a pilot, and she wanted to become a
Speaker 1: pilot too. Okay, it's not long after takeoff an engine
Speaker 1: problem forces the plane into a steep nosedive. There's a
Speaker 1: terrible crash, and witnesses think Betty and her cousin Will
Speaker 1: are dead, but Will is taken to the hospital, and
Speaker 1: instead of taking Betty there, the man that found the
Speaker 1: wreckage tosses her body in the trunk of the car.
Speaker 1: Believing she's dead, he takes her to an undertaker. Now
Speaker 1: we're at the morgue and the undertaker sees her breathing
Speaker 1: just faintly. He realizes she's still alive. She's finally sent
Speaker 1: to the hospital with numerous broken and cracked bones. While
Speaker 1: both Betty and will survive, they're horribly injured. Betty remains
Speaker 1: unconscious for two months and when she wakes up, they
Speaker 1: tell her she'll never walk without a limp, much less
Speaker 1: run again. For six months she's in a wheelchair, and
Speaker 1: she then spends two years in rehab. The whole time
Speaker 1: she's totally focused on getting back to co competitive sprinting.
Speaker 1: But here's the problem. Sprinting requires starting from a crouched position,
Speaker 1: and Betty can no longer bend her leg fully at
Speaker 1: the knee due to the pins holding the bones together,
Speaker 1: so she can't crouch for the start. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: after rigorous training, she's still really fast, fast as the wind.
Speaker 1: So she tries out for the nineteen thirty six Olympic
Speaker 1: team in relays, and she makes it. At the Berlin
Speaker 1: Olympics that year, Betty Robinson wins her second gold medal
Speaker 1: as a member of the US four by one hundred
Speaker 1: meter relay team. Her daughter Jane later said the first
Speaker 1: gold medal was not as important to her as her
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty six medal. The first was easier. It was
Speaker 1: just a few months after she started running competitively. But
Speaker 1: for the second gold. She had to work her tail
Speaker 1: off to get back from that injury. That medal was
Speaker 1: the reward for her determination to recover. Betty retired after
Speaker 1: the Berlin Olympics at just twenty four years old, but
Speaker 1: she stayed involved in athletics as an official and as
Speaker 1: an advocate for women in sports. She also married, had
Speaker 1: two kids, and worked in a hardware store for many
Speaker 1: many years. In nineteen seventy seven, she was inducted into
Speaker 1: the US National Track and Field Hall of Fame, and
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety six, at the age of eighty four,
Speaker 1: she carried the Olympic torch for the Atlanta Olympic Games.
Speaker 1: Finally suffering from cancer and Alzheimer's disease, Betty Robinson died
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty seven. She was and is
Speaker 1: the embodiment of the Olympic motto Sidius Altius Fortius, swifter, Higher, Stronger.
Speaker 1: Hope you're enjoying the backstory with Patty Steel, Follow or
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Speaker 1: you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty Steele,
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Speaker 1: Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the Elvis Durand Group,
Speaker 1: and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is Doug Fraser. Our
Speaker 1: writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes every Tuesday and Friday.
Speaker 1: Feel free to reach out to me with comments and
Speaker 1: even story suggestions on Instagram at Real Patty Steele and
Speaker 1: on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks for listening to the
Speaker 1: Backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces of history you didn't
Speaker 1: know you needed to know.