Fanny Blankers-Koen - Later Life

Later Life

After her athletic career, Blankers-Koen served as the team leader of the Dutch athletics team, from the 1958 European Championships to the 1968 Summer Olympics.

In 1977, her husband Jan died. It forced her, often dependent on Jan Blankers, to become more independent. Some years after his death, she moved back to her old hometown Hoofddorp. In 1981, the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games, an international athletics event, were established. They are still held annually in Hengelo.

Fanny Blankers-Koen's last moment of glory came in 1999. At a gala in Monaco, organized by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), she was declared the "Female Athlete of the Century". She was very surprised to have won, audibly asking "You mean it is me who has won?"

In the years prior to her death, she suffered from Alzheimer's disease and lived in a psychiatric nursing home. She was also deaf. She died at age 85 in Hoofddorp on 25 January 2004.

A year before her death, the first biography of Blankers-Koen was published, Een koningin met mannenbenen (A Queen with men's legs) by journalist Kees Kooman. Through many interviews with relatives, friends and contemporary athletes, it paints a previously unknown picture of her. During her successful years, Dutch and international media portrayed her as the perfect mother (hence her nickname "The Flying Housewife"), who was very modest about her own achievements. Kooman's book portrays Fanny Blankers-Koen in a different light, a woman who found it difficult to show affection and most of all always wanted to win. Blankers-Koen wrote an autobiography in 1949 with help from her husband.