Shirley Strickland de la Hunty biography

 Shirley Strickland de la Hunty biography

Shirley Strickland de la Hunty, née Shirley Strickland, (born July 18, 1925, Guildford, Western Australia, Australia—died February 17, 2004, Perth), Australian athlete, who gained seven Olympic medals between 1948 and 1956, in an period when Australian ladies dominated monitor occasions.

Strickland first competed on the 1948 Olympic Games in London, the place she gained a silver medal as a member of the Australian 4 × 100-metre-relay crew that completed a tenth of a second behind the winner. She additionally acquired bronze medals within the 100-metre-sprint and 80-metre-hurdle races and was credited with a fourth-place end within the 200-metre race. A photograph-finish print of that occasion, revealed in 1976, revealed that she had the truth is completed third and may have been awarded one other bronze medal.

In 1950 she married geologist Laurence de la Hunty. At the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, Strickland de la Hunty grew to become the primary girl to run the 80-metre hurdles in lower than 11 seconds, profitable a gold medal with a time of 10.9 seconds; she additionally earned a bronze medal within the 100-metre dash. In the 1956 Games in Melbourne, Australia, she gained gold medals within the 80-metre hurdles (10.7 seconds) and the 4 × 100-metre relay. Her seven medals set a file for many medals gained by a feminine competitor in Olympic athletics competitors; Polish sprinter Irena Kirszenstein-Szewinska tied the mark in 1976. A lecturer in physics and arithmetic at Perth Technical College, Strickland de la Hunty additionally set a world file within the 100-metre run (11.3 seconds) in 1955 and gained two gold and two silver medals within the Commonwealth Games and three Australian championships within the 440-yard run. She helped handle the Australian ladies’s Olympic crew in 1968 and 1976.