Paulina Radziulytė Explained

Paulina Radziulytė
Nationality:Lithuanian
Sport:Athletics, basketball
Club:Lietuvos fizinio lavinimosi sąjunga (LFLS)
Birth Date:14 February 1905[1]
Birth Place:Velikiye Luki, Russian Empire
Death Date:[2]
Death Place:Sharon, Massachusetts, U.S.

Paulina Radziulytė-Kalvaitienė (14 February 1905  - 19 June 1986) was a Lithuanian athlete and basketball player. She was the first woman representative of Lithuania at the Olympic Games,[3] and a silver medalist at the EuroBasket Women 1938. She was one of the most famous and accomplished sportswomen in inter-war Lithuania.

As an athlete, she competed in various events, but mostly in sprints and middle-distance running. She competed in the women's 800 metres at the 1928 Summer Olympics.[4] She was a Lithuanian champion in athletics 27 times and achieved Lithuanian national records 26 times. Five times (in 1927, 1928, 1934, 1936, and 1937) she was Lithuanian champion in women's basketball with the LFLS team. With the LFLS team she also won gold in women's basketball at the first Lithuanian National Olympics in July 1938. A member of the Lithuanian team, she won silver at the EuroBasket Women 1938.

During World War II, she retreated to Germany and moved to Switzerland and Australia, eventually settling in Boston, Massachusetts in 1958. In 1961–1981, she worked as a teacher at a Lithuanian school and was active in scouting. She directed school's plays and published a collection of plays in 1976.

Lithuanian athletics champion

Radziulytė won gold in the following events at the Lithuanian Athletics Championships:

National records

Radziulytė held the following national records:

Notes and References

  1. Sports-Reference.com and Lietuvos sporto enciklopedija give her birth month as November. The U.S. Social Security Death Index has her birth month as February. Likely, the confusion is caused by a mix up between Roman numeral II and 11.
  2. Web site: KALVAITIS, GEORGE C ... to KALVE, IMANTS K . Social Security Death Master File . 14 October 2017.
  3. Web site: First female competitors at the Olympics by country . Olympedia . 26 June 2020.
  4. Paula Radziulytė Olympic Results . https://web.archive.org/web/20200418090852/https://www.sports-reference.com/olympics/athletes/ra/paula-radziulyte-1.html . dead . 18 April 2020 . 11 October 2017.