When the Olympics were reborn as a modern attempt to unite humanity across national borders, they drew inspiration from the ancient Greek Olympics. In the first year, 1896, no women were allowed to compete, and that fit right in with the original ancient games, but it ignored the fact that ancient Greek women had their own sports competition in honor of the goddess Hera. The next modern Olympics in 1900 did allow women to compete in five events. Slowly, over the years, the Olympics have opened more events to women and have accepted women’s sports as part of the Games. When women were allowed to compete in archery in 1904, Eliza Pollock competed and has held a record in that event ever since.
Lida Peyton “Eliza” Pollock was born on October 24, 1840, in Hamilton, Ohio, a trading town of less than 1500 people. But Hamilton was growing, and by the end of the 19th century, it was a significant manufacturing city in the greater Cincinnati area with a population of close to 24,000. During that time, Pollock would have experienced the pains and joys that such growth offers, including a women’s academy, churches, newspapers, shops, an active rail station, and factories that milled raw crops, canned foods, and produced complicated machinery.
Archer Jessie Pollock. Chicago Daily News negatives collection, SDN-053252. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society. Taken in 1907.
At some point, Pollock became interested in archery, and she competed in the Ohio area against other women as part of the Cincinnati Archers Club. One of her rivals, Lida Scott Howell, would go on to set many archery records of her own. However, Howell had something that Pollock did not, a family history of athleticism and even an Olympian father. Pollock did win the Ohio state championship in double National in 1887, when she would have been 47 years old.
Pollock may have routinely come in second or third against other women, but she was much older than they were. In the 1904 Olympics, held in St. Louis, Pollock (for some reason listed as Jessie, not Lida or Eliza) competed. She earned two bronze medals in the double National and Columbia rounds as well as a gold as part of the first-ranking team. This made her the oldest woman, at nearly 64 years old, to ever win a gold medal at the Olympics.
Some may criticize this record, because in 1904, only six women competed, and five of those were from the same club, while all six were Americans. However, we need to remember that only 30 archers competed at all in these Games, this was only the second time the event was included at all, and it was the first time it had been open to women.
We also must consider what the events entailed to see the value of Pollock’s record (Matthews, George R. America’s First Olympics: The St. Louis Games of 1904, Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2005, pp. 168-170). The double National round was held on September 19, 1904, and required shooting 48 arrows at a distance of 60 yards and then 24 arrows at 50 yards. The double Columbia round was held the next day and required athletes to shoot 24 arrows each from distances of 50, 40, and 30 yards. Now imagine doing that as a woman in her 60s in a full-skirted dress. Is Pollock’s accomplishment not worthy of our admiration?
Pollock continued to do archery, as the photo for this article shows, for years after the 1904 Olympics. Older men and women have competed in other Olympics, but no other woman has won medals at her age or older. She has appeared in several articles and books as an inspiration to athletes. Pollock died at the age of 78 on March 25, 1919, in Wyoming.