Betty Robinson Schwartz, who in 1928 as a 16-year-old high school junior became the first woman to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field, died Tuesday in Colorado. She was 87.

Her son, Richard Schwartz Jr. of Denver, told The Chicago Tribune she had suffered from cancer and Alzheimer's disease in recent years.

Robinson's life story -- which included prodigious athletic glory, a life-threatening accident and an amazing Olympic comeback -- sounded like the product of an overimaginative screenwriter.

Elizabeth (Babe) Robinson was born Aug. 23, 1911, in Riverdale, Ill., a small town south of Chicago. Her career started when a high school teacher and assistant track coach in Harvey, Ill., saw her running for a commuter train (the legend is that she caught it). She later ran 50 yards for him in a school corridor, and a track career began.

These were the nascent days of organized women's track and field at the national level. As she told The Los Angeles Times in 1984: ''I had no idea that women even ran then. I grew up a hick. That is when I found out that they actually had track meets for women.''

Three weeks after being discovered, Robinson made her racing debut in a regional meet and finished second to Helen Filkey, the United States record-holder at 100 meters. In her next meet, the Chicago-area Olympic trials, she equaled the world record of 12.0 seconds (the current world record is 10.49, set by Florence Griffith Joyner in 1988). In her third meet, the United States final trials in Newark, she finished second and made the Olympic team.

In 1928, the year Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, female track and field athletes were allowed to compete in the Olympics for the first time. The 1928 Amsterdam Games would mark the fourth meet of Robinson's career, just four months after she took up the sport at age 16.

A week after qualifying for the Olympics, she and her teammates sailed to Amsterdam and worked out on a quarter-mile linoleum track laid around the ship's deck. In Amsterdam, she finished second in her trial heat and first in her semifinal and became the only American to reach the finals.

The finish was close in the finals, and the judges declared Robinson the winner over the favored Fanny Rosenfeld of Canada in an official time of 12.2. Because the 100-meter race was the first of five women's track and field events at the 1928 Games, Robinson had won the first gold medal handed out in her sport.

''When the flag went up after the race,'' she said, ''I started crying like a baby.''

Rosenfeld and her Canadian teammates later defeated Robinson and the American team in the 4x100-meter relay, with the United States team taking the silver.

After Robinson won the gold, Douglas MacArthur, then the president of the American Olympic Committee, presented her with a small gold charm shaped like the world. When she returned home, she was honored by ticker-tape parades down Broadway in New York and State Street in Chicago. In her hometown, she received a diamond watch from an adoring public and a silver cup from her high school.

She was still a world-class athlete when a biplane she was riding in with her cousin crashed near Chicago in 1931. Both survived, but Robinson spent 11 weeks in a hospital with severe head injuries and a broken leg and arm. A silver rod and pin were inserted to stabilize the leg, which was placed in a hip-to-heel cast. For four months, she was in a wheelchair or on crutches, and the leg became a half-inch shorter.

''If I had not been in such good physical condition,'' she said, ''I would not have lived through it.''

As it was, she was out of competition for three and a half years. When she tried a comeback in 1936, she could not bend a knee, so she had to make a standing rather than a crouching start in the 100 meters. Still, she made the Olympic relay team, along with Harriet Bland, Annette Rogers and Helen Stephens. This time in Berlin, the American team -- with Robinson running the third leg -- captured the gold when a member of the record-setting German team fumbled the baton pass before the last handoff. Robinson had completed an improbable comeback.

In 1939, she married Richard S. Schwartz, who owned an upholstery firm. They had two children.

Besides her son, she is survived by her daughter, Jane Hamilton of Denver, and three grandchildren.

Her career included world records at 50, 60, 70 and 100 yards. She was inducted into the National Track and Field, the United States Track and Field and the Helms Halls of Fame. After she stopped running, she was a coach, timer and public speaker.

She never received the publicity and public adulation of such American successors as Babe Didrikson, Wilma Rudolph and Griffith Joyner. Years after her Olympic triumphs, she said: ''I suppose most Americans don't even recognize me. It happened so long ago I still can't believe the attention I get for something I did so long ago.''

Elizabeth R Schwartz