They had a son Jan (20 August 1941) and a daughter Fanny (12 February 1946). Shortly before the German Invasion of, they engaged and on 29 Augustus 1940 they married in Hoofddorp. ![]() He recognized her talent and improved her technique. September 1935 she met the former hop step jump athlete (1928) and coach Johan "Jan" Blankers (23 April 1904, Amsterdam – 17 July 1977, Vinkeveen). She performed mediocre at school, but trained a lot stimulated by and using the facilities that were set up for the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam (28 July - 12 August 1928). As there were so many good swimmers in Holland, a coach advised her to concentrate on athletics. Several years later he got bankrupt and the family moved to Hoofddorp.Īt age 11 the restless Fanny started with athletics, but also showed talent for tennis, swimming, gymnastics, ice skating and fencing. Within a year after she was born, her father got a quarrel with the landowner of Lage Vuursche and the family had to move to a farm in the hamlet Klein Ulsda in Groningen. She was born in the farm "De Brandenburg" at Lage Vuursche near Baarn. She was the third of the five children of Arnoldus Koen (25 February 1892 - ) and Helena Houtkooper (5 August 1892, Haarlemmermeer - 7 November 1962). I’d go down to the running track and have a little run around, that was my coaching – and that was only a few weeks before the actual Olympics.Photo: Anefo / Croes, R.C., license cc-by-sa-3.0 Biographyĭutch athlete, nicknamed "the Flying Housewife", who won four gold medals at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. “I used to have to go to work in a city office and leave there in the afternoon. “Athletics to me was a sideline, now they do it all day long,” Manley told the Telegraph last year. He is now aged 96 and one of the few surviving members of the 1948 team. In addition to a busy family life, Manley taught the piano for many years and in 2012 was invited with Parlett to watch the women’s 100m final at the London 2012 Olympics.Ī brilliant athlete, too, Parlett won the 1950 European 800m title and finished eighth in the 1948 Olympic 800m final. Hall died in 1973 and six years later she married fellow athlete John Parlett in 1979. Toward the end of her career she married Peter Hall and she retired from athletics in 1952. Then, in 1951, Manley was part of a GB team that set a world record for 4×220 yards of 1:41.4. The victorious quartet appeared as cover stars on the front of AW although sadly Desforges died eight years ago and Foulds last year. ![]() At the British Empire Games that same year in Auckland she won minor medals in the relays and finished fourth in the high jump despite only being asked to do it on the eve of the event.Īlso in 1950 she won gold in the 4x100m at the European Championships in Berne after teaming up with Jean Desforges (Pickering), June Foulds and Elspeth Hay to beat, among others, a Dutch team that included Blankers-Koen. Two years later Manley won her only Women’s AAA title when she clocked 25.2 for 200m at the White City. “Fanny Blankers-Koen was such a wonderful person and she would have beaten me no matter how hard I had trained, because she was such a powerful girl,” said Manley. Then, in a final that took place on a rain-soaked cinder track, Blankers-Koen stormed to the first of her four gold medals at those Games with 11.9 to finish three metres ahead of Manley, who ran 12.2 to pip Strickland to the silver medal. Manley won her 100m heat in 12.1 and her semi-final in 12.4 as Blankers-Koen won the other semi-final in 12.0 from Shirley Strickland of Australia. “It was very different being an athlete back then,” she recalled in recent years. British team management gave her a blazer and skirt to wear at the opening ceremony but she travelled to her competitions on the Tube and raced wearing a singlet and shorts that her mother had made for her. ![]() ![]() Manley was working as a typist in 1948 but took unpaid leave to compete in the Olympics. However she was picked for the GB squad and under the coaching of Sandy Duncan continued to improve through the summer. After a poor start she finished fifth in the 100m behind winner Winnie Jordan. When those 1948 Games were approaching, Manley was 21 years old and fortunate to make the GB team.
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