Betty Cuthbert

Betty Cuthbert
Full name	Elizabeth Alyse Cuthbert
nation	Australia
birthday	April 20, 1938
place of birth	Sydney
size	169 cm
Weight	57 kg
date of death	August 6, 2017
Career
discipline	sprint
Best performance	11.4 s ( 100 m ) 23.2 s ( 200 m ) 52.01 s ( 400 m )
Medal table
Olympic games 4 × 0 × 0 × Commonwealth Games 1 × 2 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold Melbourne 1956 100 m gold Melbourne 1956 200 m gold Melbourne 1956 4 × 100 m gold Tokyo 1964 400 m  Commonwealth Games silver Cardiff 1958 220 yds silver Cardiff 1958 4 × 110 yds gold Perth 1962 4 × 110 yds

Elizabeth Alyse "Betty" Cuthbert AC , MBE (born April 20, 1938 in Sydney , New South Wales , † August 6, 2017 in Mandurah , Western Australia ) was an Australian athlete who was Olympic champion four times in 1956 and 1964 . In terms of the number of gold medals, she is one of the most successful athletes of all time.

Career

Cuthbert didn't start sprinting until high school and in the spring of 1956 ran a world record in the 200-meter run in 23.2 seconds . This made her the favorite at the Melbourne Olympics that year. First, however, she started in Melbourne in the 100-meter run , in which her compatriot and experienced Olympian Shirley Strickland de la Hunty was the clear favorite as the world record holder. It was a sensation when Strickland was eliminated in the preliminary stages. Cuthbert finally won superior to the finals and their first gold medal in 11.5 seconds before the for the all-German team starting Christa Stubnick (11.7 s) from the GDR and her compatriot Marlene Mathews (also 11.7 s). Four days after this still relatively surprising success, she won over 200 meters as the favorite with a large lead in 23.4 s, again ahead of Stubnick (23.7 s) and Mathews (23.8 s). She won her third gold medal with the Australian 4 x 100 meter relay .

At the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960 , their special disciplines 100 and 200 meters were dominated by the American Wilma Rudolph . Cuthbert was eliminated in the heats at 100 meters, did not start over 200 meters and temporarily ended her career.

At the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth in 1962 , she came back to the international athletics stage - this time over 400 meters . That move paid off, and Betty Cuthbert won her fourth Olympic gold medal over 400 meters at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

In 1979 she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis . In a wheelchair, she was one of the bearers of the Olympic torch at the opening ceremony of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney. In 2012, Cuthbert was inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame .

In August 2017, she succumbed to an illness that had lasted almost 40 years.

Individual proof

1. ^ Australian four-time Olympic gold medalist Betty Cuthbert dead at 79

Web links

Commons : Betty Cuthbert  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Betty Cuthbert in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )
• Betty Cuthbert in the database of Athletics Australia (English)
• Betty Cuthbert on Olympic.org  - The Official website of the Olympic movement (English)
• Short biography on the IOC website
• Cuthbert, Betty (1938 - 2017) , entry in The Australian Women's Register, September 16, 2002 (last changed on August 7, 2017)