Portal:Sport of athletics/Selected biography/51
Iolanda Balaș (Romanian pronunciation: [joˈlanda ˈbalaʃ], Hungarian: Balázs Jolán, later Balázs-Sőtér Jolán; 12 December 1936 – 11 March 2016) was a Romanian athlete, an Olympic champion and former world record holder in the high jump. She was the first Romanian woman to win an Olympic gold medal and is considered to have been one of the greatest high jumpers of the twentieth century. (Full article...)
Balaș took up athletics owing to her caretaker Luisa Ernst, who was also a retired high jumper.[1] In 1953 she transferred from Timișoara club "Electrica" to CCA (CSA Steaua). After finishing fifth in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, she won Olympic gold medals at Rome in 1960 (becoming the first Romanian woman to do so)[2] and Tokyo in 1964. At the 1964 Olympics she competed with a torn tendon, which forced her later to withdraw from the 1966 European Championships. Nevertheless, between 1957 and 1966, Balaș won 154 consecutive competitions,[3] not including qualifying competitions or exhibitions. She improved the world record 14 times, from 1.75 m to 1.91 m, and equalled it once outdoors and once indoors. She was the first woman to jump over six feet. Her technique was a sophisticated version of the scissors technique.[1]
Her record of 1.91 m, set in 1961, lasted until the end of 1971 (beaten by Ilona Gusenbauer from Austria), when jumpers with a more efficient technique (the straddle technique, and later the Fosbury style) took over.[1]
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- ^ a b c "Iolanda Balaş". Sports Reference. Archived from the original on 17 April 2020. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
- ^ "Romanian high jumper Iolanda Balas dies at 79". Daily Herald. Associated Press. 11 March 2016. Retrieved 10 October 2019.
- ^ "The Sport's Longest Winning Streak Gets Longer", Track & Field News (August 2016), p. 47.