Halina Konopacka (1900-1989) won the discus throw event at the 1928 Summer Olympics, breaking her own world record and becoming the first Polish Olympic champion.
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Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Today’s Wommanican was one of the most iconic characters of Poland’s interwar period. She captured the adoration of the public with her outstanding style, intelligence, sportsmanship, and courage. Please welcome Halina Konopacka.
Halina was born on February 28, 1900, in central Poland. Growing up in Warsaw, Halina excelled in many sports. She took up swimming, ice skating, tennis, horseback riding, and later, skiing.
Halina was 18 when Poland gained its independence after 123 years of Russian rule. The country became known as the Second Polish Republic.
As Halina entered her 20s, her ability to quickly master any sport shaped the course of her life. In 1926, she set her first world record in the discus throw after only a few months of training. This feat was followed by two more records in 1927 and 1928. She never lost a discus event for the entirety of her career. Halina also competed in the high jump, long jump, javelin, and pentathlon. It seemed there was nothing she couldn’t do.
Halina made her Olympic debut at the ninth Olympic games, held in Amsterdam in 1928. In a short Olympic Channel documentary, she says:
“The day of the discus-throwing was July the 31st. After a cool, rainy morning the timorous Dutch sun had broken through the fog and baked the green fields in gold. [...] The stairs leading from the dark labyrinths of the dressing rooms ushered me straight onto the field. Two red circles, throwing circles, were drawn on the grass and two curved lines were marked in chalk. One at 35 meters, the other at 40 meters away. I had only one wish as I picked up the discus: send it where the outermost distance of 40 meters was whitened with calcium. The discus dutifully obeyed. Stormy applause, thunderously stamping feet, compliments, questions, and film and photographic cameras snapping all merged into one great chaos.”
Just four years after picking up her first discus, Halina won the first gold medal for Poland.
For a nation recently reborn, Halina became a symbol of Polish pride and success. Not only for her skills, but her grace, beauty, and iconic red beret. The Polish president awarded her the Cross of Merit for her success in Amsterdam.
Later in 1928, Halina married Colonel Ignacy Matuszewski, a diplomat, military officer and treasury minister.
A little more than a decade later, World War II broke out and the security of Poland’s gold reserves were at stake. The nation’s bank had started to accumulate gold reserves in the interwar period to stabilize the Polish currency. Within the first few days of the second world war, it became clear that these reserves needed to be relocated. . Halina’s husband was tasked with moving them to safety. .
On September 7, 1939, the convoy moving the gold set out under the cover of darkness from Warsaw. The convoy was made up of ordinary buses and cars. Halina, now 39, was the last one in the line. She would later recall: “We headed south towards Romania on a black-blue night. The moon was red from being so close to Mars, a planet which, as we know, predicts horror, war, destruction and death.”
Among the personal items she brought with her was the small gold disk she won for Poland in 1928. Though she would later lose the medal, her success in this new journey was an even grander victory. . The gold safely traveled from Romania, to Istanbul, to Beirut, to the south of France, to London, and finally, to New York.
Halina settled in France with her husband before moving to the United States in September of 1941. In her later years, she explored other talents. She became a poet, founded a ski school, designed clothes and at the age of 60, went to art school and became a painter.
Her odyssey of a life came to an end in Daytona Beach Florida, on January 28, 1989. She was 88 years old. Her ashes were taken to Poland and Halina was buried alongside her parents in Warsaw.
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