History has not really retained her name, and yet Alice Milliat is a pioneer, to whom professional sportswomen owe a lot. It was she who popularized the practice of sport by women, despite the hostility of men, at the beginning of the 20th century. “A woman playing sports meant dressing in the wrong clothes. It was also considered bad for health, for procreation. And women risked losing interest in men.” explains Anne-Cécile Genre, author and director of the documentary The incorrect ones broadcast Tuesday, May 31 at 10:25 p.m. on Histoire TV.
100 years ago, the first women’s Olympics were born, thanks to Alice Milliat. At the time, it was a scandal.
The incorrect ones, right now on @historytv available with @canalplus pic.twitter.com/c7vYguRHj1
— CANAL+ Docs (@CanalplusDocs) May 21, 2022
Based on unpublished filmed archives and comments from great champions such as the Algerian Hassiba Boulmerka or the French boxer Sarah Ourahmoune, the film retraces Alice Milliat’s fight. Born in Nantes in 1884, she discovered rowing during a stay in London. On her return to France, she also took up swimming and created the first women’s sports clubs which made athletics, football or field hockey accessible to women. At the end of the First World War, it launched French championships, then in 1922, the first Women’s Olympic Games were held in Paris. “These games that took place 100 years ago, I had never heard of. I was convinced that it had fallen into oblivion because it had not really been covered by the press, that “there were no archives. And I discovered that yes! The French and foreign press had spoken about it, there were even two cameras in the stadium,” declared Anne-Cecile Genre.
The last Women’s Olympic Games took place in London in 1934 and marked the end of Alice Milliat’s public life: “She was exhausted by this fight. The Second World War passed by there and put women back in their place, that is to say at home. Alice Milliat died in 1957 in the most total oblivion. There was not his name on his grave until very recently. So it is rediscovered today, so much the better. More and more stadiums bear his name, the French Olympic Committee inaugurated a statue in his effigy l last year. She even faced Pierre de Coubertin, her great opponent, in the premises of the Olympic Committee, and I think it’s a beautiful symbol,” concludes Anne-Cecile Genre. In 2024, for the Paris Olympics, there will be as many male as female athletes. A first ! Alice Milliat would have been very proud of it.