Wyomia Tyus

Wyomia Tyus
nation	United States
birthday	August 29, 1945
place of birth	Griffin
size	172 cm
Weight	61 kg
Career
discipline	sprint
Best performance	11.08 s ( 100 m ) 23.08 s ( 200 m )
status	resigned
Medal table
Olympic games 3 × 1 × 0 × Panamerica. Games 1 × 0 × 0 ×
Olympic games gold Tokyo 1964 100 m silver Tokyo 1964 4 × 100 m gold Mexico City 1968 100 m gold Mexico City 1968 4 × 100 m  Pan American Games gold Winnipeg 1967 200 m

Wyomia Tyus (born August 29, 1945 in Griffin , Georgia ) is a former American athlete . It won three Olympic gold medals in 1964 and 1968.

Career

After finishing school, Tyus began studying at Tennessee State University . At the age of 19 she took part in the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo . Already in the run over 100 meters equaled 11.2 Tyus's three-year-old world record of Wilma Rudolph . In the final, she then distanced her fiercest opponent Edith McGuire by two tenths and became Olympic champion in 11.4 s. Together with Willye White , Marilyn White and Edith McGuire, Tyus competed in the 4 x 100 meter relay . In 43.9 s, the US relay finished second behind Poland.

In the following years, Tyus won numerous national championship titles in the sprint disciplines and a gold medal over 200 meters at the Pan American Games . In 1968 she started again over 100 meters at the Olympic Games in Mexico City and set a world record in the final with 11.0 seconds. It was the first time that an athlete could repeat an Olympic victory in the 100-meter run. In the final over 200 meters, Tyus was sixth. As the final runner in the US 4 x 100 meter relay, she ran to her second world record. The relay victory was her third Olympic victory.

After the Olympic Games, Tyus retired from active competitive sports, married Duane Tillman, had two children and worked as a trainer. In 1980 she was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the United States Athletics Federation. In 1999 she listed Sports Illustrated in the list of the 100 Most Great Women Athletes of the Century.

Web links

• Wyomia Tyus on sporting-heroes.net
• Wyomia Tyus (b.1945) , article by Lisa A. Ennis for the New Georgia Encyclopedia, Nov. 3, 2003
• Wyomia Tyus in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )

Footnotes

1. ↑ USATF: Hall of Fame - Wyomia Tyus
2. ↑ Sports Illustrated for Women: 100 Greatest Female Athletes 43. Wyomia Tyus, Track and Field ( October 19, 2012 memento in the Internet Archive ). November 23, 1999