How Dora the Man Competed in the Woman's High Jump

[Shana A]

How Dora the Man Competed in the Woman's High Jump

By Stefan Berg

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,649104,00.html

The movie "Berlin '36" is currently being screened in Germany. It tells a story of a Nazi plot against Jewish athlete Gretel Bergmann, who was prevented from competing in the 1936 Olympic Games and replaced by a man dressed in women's clothes -- a dramatic story, but probably not an accurate one.

On her last trip as a woman, Dora Ratjen wore a gray two-piece, skin-colored tights, and light-colored ladies shoes. On September 21, 1938 she took an express train from Vienna to Cologne. At the European Athletics Championships in the Austrian capital a few days earlier, she had won gold for the German Reich, clearing the high-jump bar at 1.70 meters, a new world record.