Marie Marvingt

Marie Marvingt was a French athlete, mountaineer, aviator and journalist, born in Aurillac on 20 February 1875 and based in Nancy for most of her life. Encouraged by her father, a local billiards and swimming champion, she became a world-class all-round sportswoman, winning prizes in swimming, fencing, shooting, skiing, speed skating, luge and bobsledding. Between 1903 and 1910 she was the first woman to climb most of the peaks of the French and Swiss Alps, and in 1905 she became the first Frenchwoman to swim the length of the Seine through Paris. In 1910 the French Academy of Sports awarded her a gold medal for all sports. She also became a record-setting balloonist, the first female combat pilot in the First World War and a pioneer of flight nursing.