Halina Konopacka

Halina Konopacka

Konopacka at the 1928 Olympics
Personal information
Born	26 February 1900 Rawa Mazowiecka, Russian Empire
Died	28 January 1989 (aged 88) Daytona Beach, Florida, United States
Alma mater	Warsaw University
Height	180 cm (5 ft 11 in)
Weight	65 kg (143 lb)
Sport
Sport	Athletics
Event(s)	Discus throw, javelin throw, shot put
Club	AZS Warsaw
Achievements and titles
Personal best(s)	DT – 39.62 m (1928) JT – 34.83 m (1930) SP – 9.96 m (1925)
Medal record Representing  Poland Olympic Games 1928 Amsterdam Discus throw Women's World Games 1926 Gothenburg Discus throw 1930 Prague Discus throw 1926 Gothenburg Shot put

Halina Konopacka (26 February 1900 – 28 January 1989)^[1] was a Polish athlete. She won the discus throw event at the 1928 Summer Olympics, breaking her own world record and becoming the first Polish Olympic champion. After retiring from athletics she became a writer and poet. She immigrated to the United States after World War II and died there.^[2]

Biography

Konopacka was born in Rawa Mazowiecka, Russian Empire, and grew up in Warsaw, where she trained in horse riding, swimming and skating. Her whole family also played tennis, including her father Jakub, sister Czesława and brother Tadeusz. While studying at the Faculty of Philology of the Warsaw University she also took up skiing and athletics, but soon abandoned winter sports because the training facilities were too far from her home. In 1926 she set her first world record in the discus throw, after only a few months of training, which followed by two more records in 1927 and 1928.^[2][1]

Konopacka had dark skin and brown eyes owing to her Tatar ancestors. She always wore a red beret while competing, and had a model-like body shape, for which she was nicknamed "Miss Olympia". In 1928 she married Ignacy Matuszewski, the treasury secretary of Poland. She retired from athletics in 1931, but continued to do sports recreationally, including skiing, tennis and car races, and was listed as one of the best Polish tennis players until 1937. She was a guest of honor at both the 1936 Winter and Summer Olympics, and a member of the Polish Olympic Committee in 1938–1939.^[1] Being a well-educated woman fluent in three foreign languages, she engaged in writing. She wrote her first book of poetry Któregoś dnia (Some Day) back in 1929, and later published her poems in the literary magazine of the Skamander group and in the Wiadomości Literackie, the premier literary periodical of the interbellum Poland, earning recognition of established writers such as Mieczysław Grydzewski, Kazimierz Wierzyński and Antoni Słonimski. According to professor Anna Nasiłowska, Konopacka's works were valued for their feminist approach in analyzing the relationship between the man and the woman, and for their reminiscences of youth and the treatment of the topic of jealousy.^[1][3]

In September 1939, at the onset of World War II, she helped her husband, Ignacy Matuszewski, the former Minister of Treasury in the Polish Government, evacuate the gold reserves of the Polish National Bank to France to help finance the Polish government-in-exile. After France surrendered to Germany in June 1940, the couple immigrated to the United States, arriving there through Spain, Portugal and Brazil in September 1941. After her husband suddenly died in New York in 1946, she had founded a skiing school near New York, as well as designed clothing and ran a boutique shop there. Meanwhile, in 1949, she married George Szczerbiński, an accomplished tennis player. After her second husband's death in 1959, she had moved down to Florida, where in 1960 she graduated from an art college and then became a painter, working under the alias of Helen George. She painted mostly flowers. She died on January 28, 1989^[1], and shortly thereafter was posthumously awarded the Silver Cross of Merit by the Polish government. Her ashes were laid to rest in her parents' grave at the Bródno Cemetery of Warsaw.^[4][1]

Works

• Któregoś dnia, Warszawa : Heliodor, 2008. ISBN 9788360854242, OCLC 297820845
• Halina Konopacka; Maria Rotkiewicz, Wznosiłam świat miłością, Warszawa : Spółka Wydawnicza Heliodor, 1994, ISBN 9788386338023, OCLC 749660642

References

Bibliography

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Halina Konopacka.

• Karol Wiktor Zawodziński, "Poezje Konopackiej" (The Verses of Konopacka); in id., Wśród poetów, Cracow, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1964, pages 306–308, and passim.

Records
Preceded by Maria Vidlaková	Women's discus world record holder 23 May 1926 – 22 August 1926	Succeeded by Milly Reuter
Preceded by Milly Reuter	Women's discus world record holder 4 September 1927 – 15 May 1932	Succeeded by Jadwiga Wajs