Janina Skirlińska

Janina Skirlińska (8 March 1907 – 23 April 1993) was a Polish artistic gymnast who competed at the 1936 Summer Olympics.

She was a member of the Polish women's team at those Olympics, where they placed 6th in the team competition.

At the first-ever World Championships for women in 1934, she was the 3rd-place finisher, which stands in extreme contrast to her 40th-place individual result at the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics where her marks in both the compulsory and voluntary segments on 2 of the 3 events contested were extremely low (48th place overall on the parallel bars and 36th place overall on the vaulting horse out of a field of 64 competitors), considering her performance at the preceding 1934 World Championships.

Her results at those Olympics, in addition to standing in extreme contrast to her results at the 1934 World Championships, also stand in extreme contrast to her results at the second-ever World Championships for women in 1938, where, in the all-around individual standings, she was the 4th-place finisher (out of a field of 32 competitors), the highest-finishing non-Czechoslovakian female competitor at those championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia.

Skirlinska's extreme misfortune at the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics parallels, with immediately adjacent juxtapositioning, the misfortune of Hungary's Margit Kalocsai, who finished just above Skirlinska, in 2nd place, in the individual standings at the 1934 Worlds, yet just behind her at the 1936 Berlin Olympics in 41st place.

At those Olympics, incidentally, just like Kalocsai, it was Skirlinska’s marks, in both segments of the competition, on both parallel bars and vaulting horse, rather than her relatively good placement on beam (5th for Kalocsai and 15th for Skirlinska ), that contributed to her reversal in fortune.