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Margaret Abbott
Abbott won the women’s golf competition at the Paris Olympics. For decades she did not know that her victory made her the first American woman to win an Olympic event.
Abbott was studying art in Paris when she entered the golf competition. The 1900 Games were organized differently from modern Olympics, and the significance of her win was recognized only much later. Her story shows how easily women's achievements can slip out of the historical record.
Her medal was not presented in the way Olympic medals are today. Historians later connected her Paris result to the Games, returning her achievement to the record.