The crowd was at the national AAU track meet in St. Louis to see a Polish girl called Stella Walsh run. She held the world record for 100 meters and was considered the fastest woman in the world. Also in the starting blocks that day was seventeen- year-old woman from Fulton, Missouri. When the race was over, Stella called her opponent “that greenie from the sticks,” but reporters began calling her “the Fulton Flash.” The two met again, a year later, in Berlin, at the Olympics of 1936.

AOWM – August 9