Dorothy Shirley

Dorothy Shirley ( Dorothy Ada Shirley, married Emerson; born May 15, 1939 in Manchester ) is a former British high jumper and Olympic medalist.

At the age of 19, she started for England in July 1958 at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff . She jumped 1.65 meters and came fourth behind two Australians and a New Zealander. A month later, at the European Championships in Stockholm in 1958 , she jumped 1.67 meters. So she won bronze behind the Romanian Iolanda Balaş and the Taisija Tschentschik, who competed for the Soviet Union .

At the 1960 Olympic Games in Rome, three athletes jumped over 1.71 meters in their first attempt. Dorothy Shirley and the Polish Jarosława Jóźwiakowska won silver with this height behind Iolanda Balaș, who won gold with a lead of 1.85 meters and fourteen centimeters.

In September 1962 the European Championships took place in Belgrade . At 1.67 meters, Dorothy Shirley was fourth, six centimeters behind her compatriot Linda Knowles , who won bronze. At the end of November at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Perth , Shirley took seventh place with 1.68 meters.

On August 8, 1966, Shirley won silver with 1.70 meters at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston behind the Australian Michele Brown . Almost four weeks later she was eighth at the European Championships in Budapest in 1966 with 1.65 meters.

After she was eliminated from the qualification at the Olympic Games in Mexico City in 1968 , she finished eleventh again at the European Championships in Athens in 1969 with her personal best of 1.74 meters. She showed her last major international competition at the British Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh ; With 1.62 meters, the Englishwoman was sixth again.

Dorothy Shirley is 1.64 m tall and weighed 56 kg at competition times. She started for the Salford Harriers and Athletics Club and for the Spartan Ladies.

literature

• Ekkehard zur Megede: The Modern Olympic Century 1896-1996 Track and Field Athletics. Berlin 1999 (published by the German Society for Athletics Documentation eV )

Web links

• Dorothy Shirley in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )