The Olympic Champion Who DIdn’t Know She Was In The Olympics

Chicagoan Margaret Abbott (1878 – 1955) holds three unique places in history.

First, Abbott was the first American woman ever to win a gold medal at the Olympics games. Secondly, Margaret Abbott is the only Olympic athlete to compete in the same event as her mother! Finally, she appears to be the only Olympic gold medal winner who did not know she had even entered the Olympics! Here is her amazing story!

Mary Abbott was a writer, biographer, book reviewer, and literary editor of The Chicago Herald. While living in Chicago, mother and daughter took up golf. Margaret was noted for being an excellent player. In 1899, Mary moved them to Paris to work on a book. The talented Margaret studied painting with Degas and sculpture with Rodin!

Paris hosted the 1900 World’s Fair. It was a celebration that lasted six months. The Olympics had only been restated just four years earlier, were much less formal and attracted much less attention than today. Olympic events were scattered throughout the country and were mostly a sideshow to the Worlds Fair. Some of the sporting events were considered demonstration events, like Hot Air Balloon Racing, while others counted as official Olympic contests. The distinction was not always clear. In this context, Margaret Abbott became an unwitting Olympic gold medalist!

Only 22 women participated in the 1900 Olympics. On October 4, Margaret Abbott and her mother entered what they apparently thought was a local event. The tournament took place in the town of Compiègne, about fifty miles north of Paris. Mary took seventh on the nine-hole course. To her great delight, Margaret won the tournament! She was given a porcelain cup as a token of her victory. Significantly, no one seemed to realize that the event was actually the official Olympic Women’s Golf Championship Tournament!

After her return to America, Margaret happily married the famous humor writer Finley Peter Dunne. Among her children was Phillip Dunne, a screenwriter who was famous for penning such films as “How Green Was My Valley,” “the Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” & “The Agony and the Ecstasy.” 

Margaret Abbott lived quite a happy and productive life before passing on in 1955 at age 76. She died not knowing that she had been an Olympic gold medalist – or even that she and her mother had participated in the Olympic games!

It was not until years after Abbott’s death that University of Florida professor Paula Welch began a ten-year research project that finna definitively established the 1900 Compiègne tournament as an official Olympic event. Her evidence convinced the International Olympic Committee.

Prof. Welch then notified Abbott’s children that their mother was now formally recognized as America’s first gold medal-winning woman athlete – years after her death!