從1928年阿姆斯特丹奧運會開始，女選手才被允許參加奧運會田徑比賽，當時女子田徑比賽共設有100米、800米、跳高、鐵餅和4×100米接力比賽。美國選手伊麗莎白·魯濱遜以12秒2的成績戰勝加拿大選手羅森菲爾德和史密斯，成為奧運會歷史上首位女子田徑冠軍。同時，這個成績還平了魯濱遜本人保持的世界紀錄。

Betty Robinson was a 16-year-old student who did not know she was a good runner until a teacher spotted her running after a train and timed her in a corridor back at school. Robinson competed in her first meet only four months before the 1928 Olympics. In her first outdoor meet, she set a world record for 100m. The 1928 100m was the first women's track event to be contested in Olympic history. Robinson won the final by half a metre in what was only her fourth track meet ever. She also earned a silver medal in the 4x100m relay.

1931年，魯濱遜在一次飛機失事中大難不死，但她也受到嚴重的傷害：腦震蕩、斷了一條腿、手骨折、前額被劃開一道傷口。魯濱遜昏迷了7個星期，并在此后的兩年里都無法行走。 但魯濱遜沒有向傷病低頭，她在1936年奇跡般地參加了德國柏林奧運會，這次她又與隊友一起奪得4×100米接力金牌。

Three years after her Olympic triumph, Robinson was badly injured in an airplane crash. The man who found her thought she was dead, so he put her in his car trunk and drove her to a mortician. She was unconscious for seven weeks and she could not walk normally for two years…but she did survive. Robinson wanted to return to competitive sprinting, but she was no longer able to bend her leg fully at the knee, so she could not assume the crouched starting position. She could, however, run in relays. In 1936, Betty Robinson won a second gold medal as a member of the U.S. 4x100m relay team. 

 
（Agencies)   

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