It was the biggest women’s track and field tournament of the year, the Amateur Athletic Union championships — the AAUs. Thousands of excited fans filled the stands. Hundreds of eager competitors gathered on the track. Every year the AAUs crowned the best track athletes in the nation. But this year’s contest took on extra importance. The winners would represent the United States in the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, two short weeks after the AAUs. One by one, the country’s best teams ran onto the field as they were announced to the enthusiastic crowd. The twenty-two mem- bers of the home-town Illinois Women’s Athletic Club received some of the loudest cheers. But the biggest roar came when the team from Dallas, Texas, was announced and onto the field ran its single athlete: Mildred “Babe” Didrikson. Babe was a one-woman track team. Not only was she going to com- pete in eight of the ten events at the meet, she told everyone who would listen, “I’m going to win everything I enter.” Babe did not lack opti- mism, enthusiasm, or imagination. She put these traits to good use. For the next two and a half hours, she dashed from event to event. Finishing one, then racing to the next, with barely enough time to catch
her breath in between. Contest by contest, she advanced from qualifiers to semi-fi- nals to finals. By the time the day was over, not only did Babe make the finals of every event she had entered, she had taken gold in five — 80-meter hurdles, broad jump, javelin, shot put, and baseball throw — and tied for first in the high jump. Her baseball throw is still a world record today.
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