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Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and this is Embedded.

And today we have a new series.

We made it in partnership with CBC in Canada.

The Olympics are coming up.

They start at the end of July. And of course the Olympics are a time when athletes are celebrated for how good they are at stuff.

Their strength, their speed, all the hard work they put in to even make it to the Olympics in the first place.

Well this series is something different.

In the next six episodes, journalist Rose Eveleth is going to tell you a story that goes back a hundred years

and all the way up to athletes who are trying to compete today,

women athletes. It's a story about women in

elite sports track and field to be specific. And it's a story about something that

isn't well known, but lurks behind everything we see

when we watch international sports competitions.

Okay, here's Rose. Sometimes the best way to begin a complicated story

is to start with something very simple.

So, a fable.

It begins at the end of the 19th century, with a little French man with a very large mustache,

...