Woman & Olympics

The only other sport allowed at these games for women was golf. Swimming was added to the program in 1912. The swimming Federation was the first to promote women's involvement actively and this opened the way for other international government bodies to follow, but they followed extremely slowly.
             Although women had competed at the international Olympic Committee Games since 1900 in tennis and golf, and later on in archery, gymnastics, skating and swimming. These events were initiated by Games organisers and sympathetic international federations like La Federation International de Natation Amateur. If the IOC founder and president Pierre de Coubertin and some of his colleagues had their way, these competitions would never have held. The combined opposition of the IOC and the IAAF kept women out of the most prestigious sport on the program, track and field.
             In response to the exclusion of women from track and field in the Olympics Games, Alice Milliat of France, a translator by profession, a rower and sports administrator by avocation is the founder and president of La Federation Sportive Feminine Internationale (FSFI). She started the Women's Games in direct response to the repeated refusal of International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) to put women's track and field on the program of the Olympics Games which they organised. .
             Women in many countries were competing in track and field in record numbers and achieving record times. If they couldn't enter the de Cougertin's Games, Milliat decided, that they would have an Olympic of there own.
             The first Women's Olympic Games was a one day track in Paris in 1922. Eighteen athletes broke world records in front of 20,000 spectators. The second Games were held in Gothenburg, Sweden, four years later. Women from ten nations including Japan took part. With a spectacular opening ceremony and marchpast, the patronage of the Swedish royal family, and several records, the games evoked comparisons with the IOC's Stockholm Olympics of 1912.