(ATR) Two-time Olympic high jump champion Iolanda Balas died on Friday of gastric complications at the age of 79.
Balas won gold medals at the 1960 Games in Rome and the 1964 Games in Tokyo but that only begins to reveal her dominance in the discipline.
Beginning in 1957, she won 140 consecutive high jump competitions in a period that spanned a little over a decade.
She also set 14 world records during her career. The last of those world records, set in 1961, stood for 10 years.
In 1958, she became the first woman to clear six feet with a leap of 1.83m. She also won two European Championships before her retirement in 1967.
After hanging up her spikes, she married her former coach János Sőtér and became a physical education teacher in Bucharest. She would eventually return to track and field when she became the head of the Romanian Athletics Federation. According to the IAAF, she would serve in that post from 1988 to 2005.
She was among the inaugural group of 24 athletes inducted into the IAAF Hall of Fame in 2012.
Written by Gerard Farek
Homepage photo: Getty
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