Strickland de la Hunty, Shirley Barbara

▪ 2005

      Australian athlete (b. July 18, 1925, Guildford, Australia—d. Feb. 17, 2004, Perth, Australia), was her country's most successful track-and-field athlete, with seven Olympic medals (three gold, one silver, and three bronze); she was also the first female athlete to win a medal in three consecutive Olympics (1948, 1952, and 1956) and, by winning the 80-m hurdles in both 1952 and 1956, became the first woman to defend an Olympic title successfully. At the 1948 Olympics in London, Strickland finished third in the 100-m sprint and the 80-m hurdles and was a member of the silver-medal-winning 4 × 100-m relay team. She was ruled fourth in the 200-m final, though a photograph of the finish later showed that she should have been awarded the bronze. In all four events the Dutch champion Fanny Blankers-Koen (q.v. (Blankers-Koen, Fanny )) was the gold medalist. Strickland married geologist Laurence de la Hunty in 1950 and arrived in Helsinki, Fin., for the 1952 Games determined to avenge her earlier losses. She captured another bronze in the 100 m and a gold (in world-record time) in the 80-m hurdles; her longtime rival Blankers-Koen was ill and dropped out. Strickland de la Hunty gave birth to the first of her four children in 1953 and immediately returned to competition. In 1955, at age 30, she set a world record in the 100-m sprint at the World University Games in Warsaw, and the next year she won both the 80-m hurdles and the 4 × 100-m relay at the Melbourne Olympics, the first to be held in her homeland. She failed to qualify for the 1960 Olympics and won her last title at the Australian national championships in 1962. Strickland de la Hunty received a degree in physics from the University of Western Australia in 1946, and after retiring from athletics she taught university-level physics and mathematics and coached track. At the 2000 Games in Sydney, she was one of Australia's fabled “Golden Girls” who carried the Olympic torch in the opening ceremony.

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