1956 Olympic gold medalist Mildred McDanielSingleton, one of the world's top female athletes of the 1950s, died of cancer last week at the age of 70, and was buried yesterday.
In the Melbourne Olympics on 1 December 1956, McDaniel cleared 1.76m on her second attempt to win the gold and establish a World record. The leap was one centimetre better than Romania’s Iolanda Balas’ previous record set in July of the same year. The Romanian finished fifth in the competition with a best of 1.67m.
McDaniel’s defeat of Balas was more significant than it seemed at the time, as the Romanian was to go on to win the following two Olympic titles and set another 13 World records. Her defeat in Melbourne was to be the last time that the Romanian would lose for over ten years, putting together a string of 140 victories.
An accomplished all-round sportswoman, McDaniel competed in track and played basketball at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. She was the U.S. women's High Jump champion in 1953, 1955 and 1956, and the indoor champion in 1955 and 1956. At the 1955 Pan American Games, she won the high jump with a meet record of 1.68m.
Inducted into the National Track and Field Hall of Fame in 1983, her memory also lives on in the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame and the Helms Hall of Fame in Los Angeles.
An Atlanta native, McDaniel-Singleton retired from competition after the Olympics and moved to California. She taught physical education for 32 years and retired in 1993. She died on Thursday 30 September and was buried yesterday (6 Oct) at Mountain View Cemetery in Altadena.
Associated Press and IAAF
