Olympic competition behind them, the Canadian women athletes were free to relax and enjoy the attractions of foreign capitals. In Brussels, they passed a pleasant afternoon touring a lace factory, purchasing souvenirs, and sightseeing. Boarding the train for Paris several hours later, they arrived that evening. The next day the group was up early and away by ten o’clock, happily anticipating a full day to explore the sights. Famous landmarks, such as the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, l’Arc de Triomphe, and the Palace of Versailles, beckoned.
In Amsterdam, meanwhile, the IAAF was convening on the second day of its congress at the Industrieele Club. President J.S. Edstrom began the session by reminding the delegates that at The Hague two years ago, they had decided that ladies’ athletic events would be put on the program of the 1928 Olympic Games as a trial. The federation’s executive council was pleased with the results and recommended that five or six events for women remain on the Olympic program. The congress now had to vote on this. Among those present were three representatives from Canada: Dr. A.S. Lamb, P.J. Mulqueen, and F.H. Marples. As president of the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada (AAU of C), Lamb would cast Canada’s ballot. He recognized the importance of his vote, and three months before mailed copies of the federation’s agenda to the AAU of C’s Board of Governors, the secretaries of its branches and allied bodies, and all members of the COC. In an accompanying note, he asked for their comments. Of the one hundred letters he sent out, Lamb received not a single response.
In Amsterdam, he had brief conversations with Canadian officials about athletics for women at the Olympics. But wishing to go over the subject more thoroughly, Lamb called a meeting of the other members of the COC the night before the IAAF’s vote on the matter. Pat Mulqueen and Fred Marples never appeared, although the others waited for some time. While the discussion he hoped for didn’t occur, Lamb felt he had done everything he could to learn the feelings of the AAU of C and the COC. He would cast his vote according to his principles and the opinions he heard expressed by other Canadian officials in Amsterdam.
The debate among the delegates at the congress over women’s athletics revealed a range of opinions. The Finnish delegate, who led the opposition, charged that athletic competitions for women were only a passing fad. Moreover, these sports didn’t suit women. As one male doctor expressed it, even though women’s limbs might be well developed, their hips and bust were impediments to the speed necessary for victory. The British representative, who was also opposed to women participating in the athletic part of the Olympic Games, conceded that Englishwomen might compete in the future if there was a full athletic program and a committee of women in charge of it. The Swiss delegate said he wasn’t against female participation as such, but believed the ladies’ events should be held on separate days from those of the men, or on a special day.
With equal fervor, the representatives from the United States, Greece, and Sweden spoke in favor of women athletes at the Olympics. The experiment at the ninth Olympiad was “a complete success,” they contended, and women should continue to compete. Japan’s delegate agreed. Feminine sport was steadily increasing in his country, he said, and the presence of women athletes at the Olympics would promote the trend.
Arthur Stanley Lamb was born in Ballarat, Australia, in 1886. He trained as a carpenter and continued his trade after immigrating to Vancouver in 1907. Active in the local YMCA’s Leaders Corps, he went to the International YMCA Training College in Springfield, Massachusetts. As many leading authorities in physical education were qualified in medicine, Lamb decided to become a doctor. He attended McGill University’s School of Medicine and graduated in 1917. After serving overseas, he returned to McGill, where he became the director of the Department of Physical Education when it was established in 1919–20. In 1927, his hard work as secretary of the Amateur Athletic Union of Canada was recognized and he was elected president of the organization. A year later, he was chosen manager of the Canadian Olympic Team.
At the federation’s congress two years before, no woman had spoken on the subject. In Amsterdam, however, three representatives from the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale were invited to address the congress. In a powerful speech, Lady Mary Heath of Great Britain said, “We are now your comrades and co-workers in industry, commerce, art and science, why not in athletics?” For Lady Heath, women’s admission to the Olympics was more than an equality issue. It was vital for the international development of feminine sport. “If you approve of athletics for women at all, you must approve of participation in the Olympics,” she said, “for women need the stimulus of matching their prowess against others of the world’s best athletes quite as much as the men.”
Despite her plea, the hard-liners were unbending. They raised the old quarrels, such as women weren’t allowed in the ancient Greek Olympics, and that competitive sport was injurious to women’s health. To the first contention, Lady Heath replied that the hop, step, and jump, fencing, and pistol-shooting weren’t part of the original Olympics either, but this didn’t stop them from being added to the modern Games. The examining physician of Berlin’s women athletes addressed the second concern. In ten years of practise, he told the delegates, he found female athletes got married and had normal, healthy children just like nonathletes.
As he listened to the arguments from both sides, Dr. A.S. Lamb realized there was nothing new in them. Still, he wasn’t a disinterested observer. The debate over women’s participation in the Olympic Games represented for him the bigger issues of proper sports for women and who should control them. As a doctor and physical educator, he welcomed the growing interest and participation of girls and women in recreational activities following the First World War, but he also recognized that this new lifestyle was fraught with dangers. Play was a two-edged sword, he cautioned, and misdirected activities and emphasis might be harmful.
When he rose to address the IAAF congress, Dr. Lamb did so as the representative of the country whose six women athletes were the track-and-field champions of the world. The feat was impressive and the newspapers had made much of it. The victories of the relay quartette and Ethel Catherwood, and the stellar overall performance of Bobbie Rosenfeld were among the highlights of the athletic competition, and the Canadian girls were the talk of the Olympics. In view of this, Lamb was no minor figure at the congress: The delegates were much interested in what he had to say.
Speaking as one who had fifteen years’ knowledge of feminine athletic sports, Lamb affirmed these sports were beneficial. Nevertheless, he was opposed to international athletic competitions for women and felt that such competitions shouldn’t be on the Olympic program. With that, he sat down.
The brevity and content of his speech likely surprised many. Mulqueen asked him if the Canadian representatives at the IAAF congress had a right to express an opinion. Of this Dr. Lamb was certain: It was the AAU of C that was represented at the meeting, not the COC. As the Union’s delegate, he had the authority to speak on its behalf. Furthermore, because neither Mulqueen nor Marples said anything and didn’t disagree with his remarks, he assumed they shared his viewpoint.
The discussion over, President Edstrom put the question of ladies’ events on the Olympic program to a vote. If doubts still lingered about his position, Lamb answered them by casting Canada’s vote with Finland, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, and Ireland against their continuance. Yet the stance of the powerful United States on the subject, and that of Greece — the birthplace of the ancient Olympics and site of the first modern one — decided the issue. Sixteen nations voted in favor of keeping women’s athletic events. This meant that Canada would be recorded as the first winner of the women’s track-and-field championship.
In voting the way he did, Dr. Lamb was consistent in his principles and beliefs. From the beginning, he questioned women’s fitness for athletic contests as keen as those of the Olympics. “Physically and mentally, women are unsuited for meets of this nature,” he said. “They are too highly strung and, no matter what their physical condition may be, they are bound to compete with so much at stake. Dire results often follow.” How serious the injuries, he couldn’t say, as women hadn’t participated long enough, but there was another concern. Women’s recent involvement meant they lacked men’s sense of teamwork and the ability to be good losers. To develop these, Lamb said, women needed regulated and properly supervised games appropriate for their physical and mental growth. What were these games? They were tennis, badminton, swimming, skating, golf, and fencing. Track and field, therefore, was not the means, nor the Olympic Games the way. Rather than enhancing women’s well-being, they threatened it.
Bobbie Rosenfeld and Myrtle Cook considered these theories nonsensical. Bobbie said she would gladly fall in line and support the opposition to women’s track and field if given one case of a female athlete who suffered because of direct participation in athletics. Otherwise, she felt these ravings were “plain ordinary, everyday tommyrot.” Myrtle declared that most who issued warnings, ultimatums, and the like had never raced in world competitions and therefore didn’t know what effect they had physically. The critics were writing what they thought — not what they knew from experience.
Yet it was obvious to Lamb that certain events in Amsterdam widely supported his concerns. When the track-and-field program came to a close, he felt enormous relief. For him, the remarkable achievements of Canada’s athletes in the Olympic Stadium against the world’s best had been overshadowed by the uncontrolled and violent emotions of a few. The shameful conduct of Robinson and Mulqueen was depressing enough, but the disqualification of Myrtle Cook and the sight of her standing at the side of the track, tears streaming down her face, confirmed his worst fears. And when the protest occurred after the race, it only added to his woes. Not only was the principle of good sportsmanship violated, but a dubious message was conveyed to the girls’ team.
The protest upset him because he saw in it the menace facing Canadian sportswomen. The win-at-all-costs mentality smacked of professionalism, a problem affecting men’s sports. Led as it was by Mulqueen and Robinson, the outcry over the result of the women’s 100 meters final showed Lamb what could happen to women’s sports with men in control. They were in peril of being hijacked by unscrupulous promoters and others for self-glorification and financial gain. Only a policy of women’s athletics being governed by women would prevent this, Lamb believed. But as long as they were part of the Olympics where men were in charge, it was impossible.
The low point came two days later, in the women’s 800 meters. The sportsmanship of Bobbie Rosenfeld was praiseworthy, but it was the only bright spot in an event marked by controversy. The flap created by Mulqueen and Robinson over the pacing of an American by a teammate, and the sharp words of Mulqueen to the IAAF president about the incident were sufficiently distressing. But it was the scene of exhausted women on the infield at the end of the final and a prostrate Jean Thompson, sobbing uncontrollably in Bobbie Rosenfeld’s arms, that most affected Lamb. For him, the sad spectacle was indisputable proof that women were physically and mentally unsuited for meets as demanding as the Olympic Games. Furthermore, the reaction of Thompson to her fourth-place finish and of Cook to her disqualification showed that women lacked the “good losing” qualities necessary to compete.
In casting his vote against women’s future participation, Dr. Lamb was convinced he had faithfully represented the position of the AAU of C. He was certain the others in Amsterdam felt the same. “On no occasion did I hear anyone, who might be considered as a Canadian official, favor a continuance of the present policy,” he said, “but, on the other hand, there were many outspoken opinions against it.” In this, he was mistaken. If he had spoken to Alex Gibb, or discussed the matter more closely with Bobby Robinson, he would have discovered at least two Canadian officials who thought differently.
When Lamb called the special conference the evening before the vote to discuss women’s athletics at the Olympics, Robinson had already left Amsterdam for a motor tour of the battlefields of France. Had he been at the meeting, he would have denied that women’s participation at the Olympic Games was undesirable. What he did say, however, was that it was undesirable to hold their events at the same time as the men’s. He thought that separate days or separate programs would be better, but that the innovation of girls’ athletics at the Olympics was a success.
Alex Gibb was in London with the women’s team when she learned of Lamb’s vote. Stunned and humiliated, she told curious English reporters, “He evidently thinks so little of what our sextette did against worldwide competition that he voted against Canada or any other nation being permitted to have women participate at future Olympic Games.” Seldom, if ever, did he consult with those directly involved, she charged, and even though she was manager of the girls’ team and Canada’s representative on the Fédération Sportive Féminine Internationale, he never conferred with her.
In an attempt to explain Lamb’s “strange vote,” Gibb attributed it to geography. He was from Montreal, she said, where competitive athletics for women were practically “a minus quantity.” Moreover, the biggest city of Canada never had an outstanding female athlete, nor did it have a single representative at the final Olympic Trials in Halifax. Undoubtedly, this was due to the objection that existed in Montreal against competitive sport for women. Whatever Lamb’s reasons, Gibb vowed the Women’s Amateur Athletic Federation in Canada would never accept a vote of this kind without knowing if it was a personal vote or a Canadian one. For Alex Gibb, the answer was already clear: “Dr. Lamb abrogated to himself the complete right to decide all Olympic issues.”
Lamb’s action was seen as one more act in the Olympic melodrama involving Canadians. As a reluctant participant in the farce, Dr. Lamb lamented the effect it had on everyone. He confessed that Canada had achieved two records at Amsterdam: first, the marvelous results of her athletes; and second, the most deplorable reports of misunderstandings, strife, discord, and bad feeling, which were sent back home.
Unfortunately, the nonsense would continue. Sportswriter Mike Rodden of the Globe predicted a final explosion of such magnitude that the incidents that preceded it would pale in comparison. “Protests, counter protests, and protests against protests marred Canada’s participation in the 1928 Olympiad, and there will be a reaction and a showdown,” he said. “Dr. Lamb hurled a bombshell with telling effect when he voted against having women compete in the world’s championship events. It is alleged that he consulted no one, and this despite the fact that the Canadian women’s team won the title.”
