Photo originally published Feb. 3, 2010.
Swedish illustrator Jessica Romberg moved to Vancouver three years before the 2010 Winter Olympics and painted 60 portraits of Olympic gold medalists from 1898 to 2006, with an equal number of men and women athletes from as many nations as possible and every Olympic Games.
As well as being a fan of the “nice moustaches” athletes sported around 1910, Romberg said one of her favourite Olympians to paint was Polish (later American) athlete Stanislawa Walasiewicz, also known as Stella Walsh. She was a Polish sprinter who won gold in the 100-metre distance in Los Angeles in 1932, and was shot to death when she happened to be at a bank as it was robbed in 1980. A subsequent autopsy revealed Walsh had male genitals and both male and female chromosomes, a condition known as mosaicism, though she lived her entire life as a woman.
During the Vancouver Olympics, Gravity Pope (2205 West Fourth) hosted an exhibit of Romberg’s portraits titled, fittingly enough, Gold.
