Australian Dictionary of Biography

Edith Robinson [detail], 1932

State Library of New South Wales

Edith Frances Robinson (1906–2000), athlete, was born on 26 September 1906 at Marrickville, Sydney, sixth surviving child of Queensland-born parents George Henry Robinson, brewery carter, and his wife Mette Christina, née Rasmussen. Edie attended Kogarah High School, where athletics was not a sport available for girls, hence she did not run competitively when a student. During winter she played vigoro, at which she developed a talent. In 1923 she commenced work at Anthony Hordern & Sons Ltd’s clothing factory, and began competing at sports carnivals amongst Sydney’s business houses, becoming an early member of the City Girls’ Amateur Sports Association. Competing for the Hordernian Social and Athletic Association, she won the New South Wales women’s 75- and 100-yards championships in 1926 and 1927. In 1928 she again won the 100 yards, as well as the 50 yards. She thus became the inaugural State champion in each of the three distances. At the time, there were no Australian athletics championships for women.

In January 1928 the Australian Olympic Federation arranged an Australian National Games for athletes to test themselves over distances that they would encounter if they were good enough to be selected for the upcoming Olympic Games in Amsterdam. Robinson decisively won the women’s 100 metres, and with her good form for the rest of the athletics season her name came before the Olympic selectors; track and field events for women were to be conducted for the first time in the Dutch capital. Although initially listed on the supplementary list for the team, she was ultimately chosen as one of four women—one athlete and three swimmers—and fourteen men in the Australian team. Anthony Hordern’s assisted with the raising of the necessary funds for her to make the trip. Hence she became the first Australian woman to compete in Olympic athletics.

Robinson finished second in her heat of the women’s 100 metres at Amsterdam, and progressed to the semi-finals. She then finished third behind the eventual gold medallist, Betty Robinson of the United States of America, and Canada’s Myrtle Cook, the holder of the world record for the event. Fourth was Japan’s Kinue Hitomi, the world record holder before Cook. Only the first two qualified for the final. Under the circumstances, with no training facilities aboard the ship to Europe, poor diets en route and in the Olympic accommodation, and minimum physical conditioning, Robinson’s performance was outstanding. Encouraged especially by her all-male athletics team-mates, she ran in the women’s 800 metres, a distance over which she had never previously competed. A stitch in her side caused her to pull out of her heat after 600 metres, but ‘still, it was fun,’ she later remembered (Harari 2000, 7). Considered taxing for women, the event was controversial, and it promptly disappeared from the women’s Olympic program until Rome in 1960, where one of the next two Australian women who entered, a fully trained and prepared Brenda Jones, won the silver medal.

For the next eight years Robinson continued competing, winning further New South Wales championships in the 100 yards (1933–35) and the 220 yards (1931–33 and 1935–36), and dead-heating for first, with Clarice Kennedy, in the inaugural running of the 440 yards in 1933. With the advent of Australian track and field championships for women in 1930, Robinson won the 100 and 220 yards in the 1934–35 season, and the 220 yards—her ‘favourite race’ (Sydney Morning Herald 1933, 20)—again in 1935–36. Late in 1933 she expressed her desire to compete in the upcoming Empire Games in London. During the ensuing 1933–34 season, she ran her best time of 11.0 seconds for the 100 yards which, although equalled a number of times, was not bettered by an Australian woman until Marjorie Jackson’s 10.9 seconds in 1949. Somewhat surprisingly, Robinson did not go to London, with only two women, a swimmer and a diver, chosen as members of the Australian team. Had she, her best times for the 100 and 220 yards would have certainly have seen her as a contender for a medal in each event, and possibly the gold in the 100 yards. The press marvelled at her longevity and competitiveness in an athletics career stretching over a decade, something of a rarity at the time for women in the sport. She also found time for administration at her athletic clubs and the New South Wales Women’s Amateur Athletic Association.

Soon after winning her final Australian championship, Robinson retired in advance of her marriage to Henry (Harry) Payne, a stove fitter, at the Bexley Methodist Church on 11 April 1936. The couple settled at Newtown, and she resumed tailoring. She briefly remained active as an athletics official, and also enjoyed crown green bowls. Having had a lower part of a leg amputated several years previously, on 2 September 2000, as Australia’s oldest living Olympian at ninety-three, from a wheelchair she cut the ribbon at the official opening of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Village at Homebush. Next she carried the Olympic torch in Sydney, after receiving it from the Australian Test cricket captain Steve Waugh, on the day before the opening ceremony, which she attended. There, in the prelude to the proceedings, she was acknowledged in person and in a video. On 7 October she died at Kogarah, survived by her daughter, Beverley, and was cremated; her husband had predeceased her. Streets of the Canberra suburb of Nicholls, named predominantly after Australian sports people, include Edie Payne Close.