BEIJING — In early 1940, a 24-year-old bobsled driver named Katharin Dewey piloted three men to unprecedented victory at the AAU national championships in Lake Placid, N.Y., shattering a once-impenetrable icy ceiling. “Bobsledding, since its inception a stronghold of male sport, bowed … to femininity,” the Associated Press wrote at the time. But the thrill proved short-lived. As the Saturday Evening Post reported later that decade, “This pill was too bitter for some of the lads to swallow. The next winter Katharine was barred from racing.”
A half-century-plus passed before more meaningful progress arrived: Not until the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City did the IOC finally allow two-woman bobsleigh into its program, despite both four- and two-man versions appearing in every Games at which sliding events were held since the Great Depression.