Bizarre Olympic Moment - Day 8

Each day of the 2008 Olympics we're going to find a bizarre clip or story from a past Summer Olympics. Today we'll look at Polish-American Runner Stella Walsh.

Stella Walsh immigrated to America when she was a young child and became a high school star in Cleveland, she won 41 US Championships in her career and was inducted in to the US Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1975. In her Olympic career she competed for her birth country Poland. In 1932 she won gold for Poland and in 1936 she finished second to her main rival Helen Stevens.
Many of Walsh's supporters claimed that Helen Stevens was too fast to be a woman and believed she was actually a man. Oh the irony. Why was this ironic? In 1980, Stella was tragically killed by a stray bullet in a robery. During her autopsy the doctors discovered something interesting. We believe the conversation between the doctors went something like this.

That's right Stella Walsh was a man. She was born Stanislawa Walasiewiczowna in Poland and had male genitals and both male and female chromosomes - a condition known as mosaicism. No doubt this gave the media plenty of opportunity to use the headline "Stella the Fella".

Looking at the photos of Stella we can see why everybody was so shocked to learn she wasn't a woman.


Take a look at the 16 most bizarre Olympic moments in history:

Day 1 - Eric "The Eel" Moussambani
Day 2 - Betty Robinson
Day 3 - Sally Robbins
Day 4 - Abebe Bilkila
Day 5 - 1972 USA Basketball team
Day 6 - Bobby Pearce
Day 7 - Byun Jong-il
Day 8 - Stella Walsh
Day 9 - Spanish Paralympic Basketball Team
Day 10 - Ingeborg Marx
Day 11 - Vanderlei de Lima
Day 12 - Hans-Jurgen Todt
Day 13 - Liu Changchun
Day 14 - Dorando Pietri
Day 15 - 1956 Hungarian Water Polo Team
Day 16 - 1960 Tunisian Modern Pentathlon Team