logo
episode-header-image
Nov 2022
8m 59s

The Golden Girls of Zimbabwe

Bbc World Service
About this episode

In 1980, the newly independent nation of Zimbabwe was invited to enter a women's hockey team at the Olympic Games in Moscow. Despite their unfamiliarity with the pitches - and each other - the players won an unexpected gold medal and were nicknamed the Golden Girls. In 2016, Claire Bowes talked to Liz Chase, one of the victorious Zimbabweans.

(Photo: Zimbabwe's women's hockey team display their gold medals. Credit: Patricia McKillop via Alamy)

Up next
Apr 25
Making Escape to Victory
The 1981 film Escape To Victory is a World War Two tale of a football match in a prisoner of war camp in Nazi Germany starring Sylvester Stallone, Michael Caine and Max von Sydow. The climax of the movie is the match between the POWs and the Germans. In the prisoners' team agains ... Show More
10m 1s
Apr 18
The Fabiola Rule
In the 1990s, rollerblading had separate competitions for men and women. That changed in 2000, when the two were combined into one mixed competition. Brazilian Fabiola Da Silva was so good against the men that the change became known as the "Fabiola Rule". For more than a decade, ... Show More
10m 27s
Apr 11
International football's biggest ever beating: 31-0
In April 2001, the small island nation of American Samoa took on Australia in the World Cup qualifiers. You could only play for the team if you held an American passport, which automatically ruled out the majority of the American Samoans, leaving them to resorting to picking scho ... Show More
10m 9s
Recommended Episodes
Jul 2021
Sporting heroines of history
Multi Gold-winning Paralympian Tanni Grey-Thompson explores the role of women in sport through history. She looks at some of the milestones in sport for women and acknowledges several people who were pivotal in helping to make sure women were finally recognised – among them Alice ... Show More
27m 25s
Dec 2023
WBBL winner: 'I taught myself how to bowl spin'
Alison Mitchell, Jim Maxwell and Charu Sharma are joined by Zimbabwe’s Anesu Mushangwe who has just won the Women's Big Bash League with the Adelaide Strikers. She became the first player from Zimbabwe to win the title and tells us how she learnt how to bowl throwing lemons. Anes ... Show More
26m 28s
Jul 2021
A Tough Road To Gold For The U.S. Women's Soccer Team
Coming into the Tokyo Olympics, the U.S. Women's Soccer Team was the clear favorite to bring home a gold medal, which would make them the first team to ever a World Cup title and an Olympic title back-to-back. But after dropping their first game to Sweden 3-0, and battling Austra ... Show More
15m 32s
Jul 2023
BBC OS Conversations: Women in sport
The Women’s World Cup is underway and global attention is once again on women in sport. Host James Reynolds brings together Preeti Singh, a national and international basketball player for India, lawyer and former England netball player Eboni Usoro-Brown and Jennifer Jones, one o ... Show More
23m 58s
Sep 2020
Madison Hammond: I didn’t think I’d be the first anything in sport
Madison Hammond is the first Native American woman to sign a professional contract with an NWSL club. She joins us ahead of OL Reign’s opening game of the season and her potential debut against Utah Royals to discuss how she is hoping to inspire more Native American girls to play ... Show More
48m 55s
Sep 2022
Zimbabwe’s historic win in Australia
On this week’s episode of Stumped with Alison Mitchell, Jim Maxwell and Charu Sharma, we react to Zimbabwe’s shock win over Australia. It’s the first time that they have beaten Australia on their own soil. We speak to Zimbabwe’s man of the match Ryan Burl, who took five wickets f ... Show More
36m 5s
Dec 2021
Unstoppable women of rugby
<p>The first female known to have played rugby was Emily Valentine, an Irish schoolgirl, who played alongside her brothers in 1884. It took another 80 years for a women's team to be formed, and the first Women's Rugby Union World Cup was held in 1991. Kim Chakanetsa speaks to two ... Show More
27m 35s
Jan 2024
How do African athletes train for the Winter Olympics without ice?
Nigeria’s youth curling team, the Broomzillas, are Africa’s first curling team to reach a Winter Youth Olympics. Their journey to the 2024 Gangwon Games in South Korea hasn’t been easy. They’ve struggled with funding and of course, as Nigeria doesn’t have freezing weather, access ... Show More
14m 3s
Nov 2023
Who was the first woman to win an olympic medal?
Today, athletes like Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky are Olympic rockstars. But did you know that when the Olympics started, women weren’t even allowed to compete? And when they did join the games, female athletes struggled to get the same recognition as men. Join Joy, co-host Ely ... Show More
28m 40s