After lifting a 300 lb (136 kg) barbell over her head in 1932, Ivy Russel was named the British women’s weightlifting champion. However, this title was not assigned by any governing body because, at the time, the B.A.W.L.A. didn’t recognise women in the sport, something that Russell herself helped to change.

Born the same year as Pullum Sports, 1907, Ivy Russell pushed the boundaries of what was possible in both physical culture as a whole and for women living in the 1930s.

Pullum & Russell

The prejudice against women at the time, especially in sport, was duly noted by W.A. Pullum when he began training Russell in 1923. Forward-thinking Pullum stated, ‘There was nothing masculine about her in spite of her strenuous endeavours,’ in an article that he wrote entitled ‘The Famous Ivy Russell’, for the magazine ‘Health & Strength’, of which he was the owner. He went on to explain, ‘she was just a nice-looking, very strong, intelligent and determined young woman.’

Despite these good-natured comments from Pullum, it is important to note that they are still shrouded in the perspective of the era. The incessant need to prove that weightlifting didn’t strip Russell of her femininity is well-documented across a variety of articles featured in newspapers such as The Daily Mirror: ‘In spite of her strength, Ivy is shy and retiring and has a purely feminine outlook. She enjoys cooking and sewing.’ The suggestion is that because Russell was a weightlifter, she somehow needed to prove her femininity in other facets of life, burdening her with the responsibility to maintain the ideal personal identity to justify her place in the sport, a burden that would never have been placed on a man.

That being said, Pullum was clearly very fond of Russell, referring to her as ‘A wonderful girl’; he claimed to be solely responsible for her weightlifting training. Russell had apparently asked her trainer, E.A. Streeter, specifically to go to Pullum for instruction. Following their introduction, Russell and Streeter began visiting Pullum’s lifting club in Camberwell twice a week. In addition, Pullum arranged the training she would do back in Streeter’s Croydon gym.

Fitness as Remedy

Like Pullum, Russell was a sickly child, suffering from tuberculosis, who took charge of her health through exercise. Her regimen, devised by Streeter, consisted of deep breathing exercises and mild jogging around the countryside.

Through regular exercise, her health improved so much that she began training in acrobatics, gymnastics and boxing; according to Pullum, she was also proficient in fencing! However, there is little information relating to her fencing skills or training.

Luckily for us, there is plenty of information regarding her weightlifting career.

The World’s Strongest Woman

Just two years after Pullum began her weightlifting training, in 1925, Ivy Russel made a remarkable clean and jerk of 176 pounds (80 kg) at only 18 years old and just 134 pounds (61 kg), surpassing the lifts of many of the men she was training alongside.

By 1932, Ivy had become such a confident and experienced weightlifter that she issued a public challenge to strongwoman Tillie Tinmouth and emerged from their faceoff victorious, by lifting a 300-pound barbell overhead. Following Ivy’s victory, she became recognised by the public as the Women’s Amateur Weightlifting Champion of Great Britain and earned her the unofficial title of ‘The World’s Strongest Woman’.

Pullum recorded some of her most remarkable lifts in Health & Strength:

A Woman in Sport

Her title of ‘world’s strongest woman’ remained unofficial due to the B.A.W.L.A. (British Amateur Weightlifting Association) refusing to recognise Russell and Tinmouth’s face-off as an official event. The organisation claimed that they didn’t want to promote women’s weightlifting, because it was ‘harmful to the female body’.

With her newfound public acclaim, Russell continually lobbied for the B.A.W.L.A. to grant women full membership and sanction women's contests. She was unflinchingly outspoken in many articles that she wrote for Health & Strength magazine, alongside many other publications. She commented, ‘The veto of the Governing Body will only serve to discourage real lifters from accepting the training of ladies. Consequently, ladies in many parts of the country will train under conditions far from ideal, with consequent harm, not only to the ladies themselves, but for the B.A.W.L.A. as a body.’

Because of Russell's prodigious lifts, the medical and sports communities could no longer claim women were physically incapable of the sport. Her tireless advocacy and the opening of her own gym in Croydon laid the structural groundwork for the official acceptance of women by B.A.W.L.A. and IWF in the 1980s, which was the direct, eventual realisation of the battle Ivy Russell started in 1932. Women have been competing professionally in strength sports ever since. Women's weightlifting finally made its Olympic debut in Sydney, 2000, 68 years after Ivy Russell began campaigning for women to be recognised in the sport.

Wrestling Career

Following her significant victory over Tinmouth, there was no woman in Britain who dared challenge Russell’s title. So, she was in search of a new physical challenge. Her impressive combination of strength and agility ultimately led her to pursue wrestling.

After just a few months of training, she became known as ‘The Brunette Bearcat’, confidently taking on the much more experienced Peggy Parnell, ‘The Blonde Tigress.’ Ivy won the first two out of three submissions in less than 10 minutes total! claiming the title of British Women’s Wrestling Champion, adding to her long list of titles and achievements.

Sport & Femininity

Despite her prowess and obvious skill, Russell once again faced immense critique for continuing to compete in traditionally male-dominated sports. The attitudes of the time are vividly encapsulated in this quote from Rev T. H. Tardrew, vicar of St. John’s, Newington:

But Russell was not one to back down from such harsh criticism; this was something she had faced throughout her life, purely for being a woman gifted with strength and sporting ability. Russell responded to the reverend with grace and perceptive wit:

Here we once again see Russell's bold progressiveness. Her statement, published in the pages of John Bull, reads as though it could have been written today, expressing frustration at the contradiction between the importance of women learning self-defence and the expectation that they remain conventionally 'feminine'. The concerns she identifies remain strikingly relevant to contemporary feminist discourse.

Conclusion

Ivy Russell's impact and legacy are undeniable. She was not only an exceptionally talented athlete but also a trailblazer for women's rights and equality in sport. Through her achievements and unwavering determination, she helped pave the way for women to be officially accepted into the weightlifting community, proving that they deserved to be recognised as serious athletes on equal terms with men. More than a century later, her legacy still echoes through competition halls around the world, where female weightlifters continue to prove exactly what Russell always believed: that strength has never been limited by gender.

She was the world's strongest woman, in more ways than one.