Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld

Track & Field

December 28, 1904 – November 14, 1969

The daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants, Fanny “Bobbie” Rosenfeld came to Barrie as an infant. She attended Victoria Public School and Barrie Collegiate Institute, where she excelled in softball and basketball, leading the latter team to the Simcoe League title. In 1922 Bobbie entered the Great War Veterans Association Track Meet at the Barrie Fair Grounds and challenged all corners to a 100-yard race. When no girls took her up, she raced the boys, and with a three-yard advantage, won handily. Later that summer her family moved to Toronto, where she joined the Patterson Athletic Club.

An outstanding basketball player, Bobbie led her Young Women’s Hebrew Association teams to several Ontario & Eastern Canadian Championships, and twice took them to the Canadian finals, where they lost each time to the legendary Edmonton Grads. As a hockey player, she competed for the YWHA, and for North Toronto, twice ladies’ City Champions. She played shortstop for the Hinde & Dauch team in the Sunnyside Ladies’ Fastball League, which won several City titles. Bobbie was also an accomplished lacrosse player, golfer, speed skater, and tennis player – winning the Toronto Ladies’ Grass Courts Tennis Championship in 1924. Bobbie’s greatest achievements, however, came on the track.

In 1923 Bobbie came to international prominence at the C.N.E. meet by defeating Canadian record holder Rosa Grosse, and American and world record holder Helen Filkey, at 100 yards. She began to compete all over Canada & the USA and was seldom beaten in the sprints. In 1926 the Patterson Club won the Ontario Ladies’ Track & Field Points Championships, despite Bobbie being its lone entrant. She won the shot (36’3″), 220 (26 sec), long jump (1616″), 120-yard low hurdles (16 sec) & discus (84’8″), while finishing second in the javelin (6118) and 100 yards (to Rose Grosse). In 1922 she set a Canadian discus record (12011″), that stood until 1952. At one time Bobbie held Canadian records in the long jump (18’3″), standing broad jump (8’1″), and all the contested sprint distances.

Selected to the 1928 Olympic team – the first year of competition for women – Bobbie anchored the gold medal 4×100 relay team to a new world record of 2:22.4, and also won a silver in the 100, losing the gold to American Elizabeth Robinson on a disputed judge’s decision. (Robinson’s 12.2 was a world record.) She was credited with 12.3 in that hand-timed era, even though she may have won. She was also 5th in the 800 metres (an event she had never run), even though she was only entered to encourage young Jean Thompson, whom she refused to pass when the latter faltered.

Arthritis forced permanent retirement in 1933, although Bobbie coached the Empire Games Track Team in 1932, and continued to coach softball. She wrote a sports column for the Toronto Globe & Mail for 20 years and was respected for the range of events she covered effectively.

In 1950, Bobbie edged out Barbara Ann Scott in a Canadian Press poll to choose Canada’s Female Athlete of the Half-Century. Years later, the Bobbie Rosenfeld trophy was created in her honour and awarded annually by the Canadian Press to Canada’s Female Athlete of the Year. Bobbie was also elected to the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame in 1949 (the only female all-around athlete so honoured), and in 1981 was posthumously elected to the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.