She was Expelled from the 1936 Summer Olympics for Having a Few Glasses of Champagne
Olympic swimmer Eleanor Holm was fun, fearless, and not afraid to push the boundaries
Years ago, I read The Boys in the Boat, a book based on the true story of the University of Washington men’s rowing team who beat the odds to win gold at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games in Berlin.
The book is fantastic, and I highly recommend it.
However, one passage stuck with me long after the last page, and it had nothing to do with the boys in the boat.
The author describes the excitement among the Olympic hopefuls in the chapter detailing the U.S. Olympic team’s journey by ship to Germany. These elite athletes had trained for years and were finally on their way to compete on the international stage.
Unfortunately, one Olympian would never get to compete in those Games. The author casually mentions that a young woman named Eleanor Holm was kicked off the Olympic team for getting drunk one evening. There are no more details about the incident; she is a mere footnote in his novel.
I had to find out more about her.
