Lina Radke, byname of Karoline Radke-Batschauer, (born October 18, 1903, Karlsruhe, Germany—died February 14, 1983, Karlsruhe), German athlete who set a number of middle-distance working data between 1927 and 1930. Her victory within the 800-metre race on the 1928 Olympic Games—the primary Olympics to incorporate girls’s athletics—set a world document that was not damaged for 16 years.
Distance working had been thought-about too exhausting for ladies athletes till the Twenties; the 800-metre run was one of many occasions within the first worldwide girls’s monitor meet in 1921. Radke set a world document within the 800-metre occasion to win the German championship in 1927 and improved upon that point in a race for the South German championship the following 12 months. At the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam, Radke closed with a burst of velocity to win the gold medal, setting a world-record time of two minutes 16.8 seconds. Several runners collapsed on the finish of the race. Although male athletes additionally usually fainted after races, the International Olympic Committee concluded that the 800-metre run was too tough for ladies and dropped it from Olympic Games till 1960. Radke’s remaining particular person world document got here in 1930, when she ran the 1,000 metres in 3 minutes 6.6 seconds.