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Shirley Strickland-de la Hunty
Having won seven Olympic medals, three gold, one silver and three bronze in three successive Olympic organizations, the Australian Shirley Strickland-de la Hunty is included, together with Irena Szewiska-Kirszenstein from Poland, among the most victorious track athletes in the Olympic Games. She won two of her three gold Olympic medals in the 1956 Melbourne Games. Therefore, she became one of the "golden girls", as their compatriots nicknamed Strickland and Cuthbert (and later Cathy Freeman) for their successes in the sixteenth Olympic Games.
Strickland was born in Northam, a city in western Australia. She took up sport at an early age, after the exhortations of her father especially, who in early 20th century was one of the most famous professional sprinters. During her school years she practised sport more systematically, participating in school championships. Then she moved to Perth for university studies, where apart from the track she took up tennis and hockey. Until 1945, when she concluded her studies in mathematics (in the future she would pursue an academic career), her involvement in sport was rather occasional. She began to practise sport on a more permanent basis from 1946 and especially in 1948, in view of the London Olympics. There she competed with Fanny Blankers-Koen and won a silver medal in the 4x100m relay and two bronze in the 100m and the 80m hurdles.
In 1950, a year when she impressed at the games of the Commonwealth, Shirley Strickland was already a famous athlete and a successful university professor. The same year she married the geologist L. de la Hunty. In 1952 at the Helsinki Games, Strickland-de la Hunty won her first gold Olympic medal in the 80m hurdles, setting a new world record in a final where Blankers-Koen did not manage to finish. In those Games Strickland won one more medal, a bronze, in the 100m. The first winner in that event was the Australian Marjorie Jackson. The following year she gave birth to the first of her three children and resumed training three months after childbirth.
However, she achieved her highest performances in 1955, breaking Jackson's world record in the 100m. In the Melbourne Olympics she won two more gold medals: in the 80m hurdles and in the 4x100m relay, setting a new Olympic and world record respectively. She was and still is the only female athlete to win two gold Olympic medals in a row in high hurdles. She pursued championship sport, especially at national level, until 1962. Then she retired and despite her academic duties in the university she also worked as a track trainer. She was one of the female athletes that carried the Olympic flag at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Games.
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