Olympic Games First

[DoubleRBar]

Happy birthday today (Sunday) to an Olympic champion who was born 89 years ago today.

This champion played tennis, basketball, volleyball, and table tennis among other sports.

An Olympic gold medalist (track & field) from 13 years ago and a fairly famous photographer both share the same initials with our birthday person.

Did I tell you that our birthday individual was the first in track & field to accomplish something at the Olympic Games?

Remember that fairly famous photographer?

Well, she died about 13 weeks after our birthday athlete.

No hurdles were involved with our birthday champion.

You might be interested to know that this athlete won two Olympic bronze medals in the same event in which this person won Olympic gold.

About 23 years ago, our birthday individual died at the age of 65.

Please try and name this Olympian on this last Sunday of April.

[Tuariki]

Sounds like it may be Dame Yvette Williams (Mrs Corlett)

[Tuariki]

Yvette played basketball into her late 50s, maybe into her 60s. It was her brother, Commonwealth Games decathlon champion, Roy Williams, who helped me get my scholarship to WSU.

When I returned to NZ in 1978 I played basketball with her son Neville Corlett.

[Tuariki]

Hmmn, I think I am wrong as Yvette only died 2 years ago.

[DoubleRBar]

Yvette Williams is a very good guess, Tuariki, but not right. I say she was a very good guess because she was born on April 25, however three years before our birthday champion. I can tell you that both Yvette Williams and our birthday athlete competed at the same Olympic Games in Finland. Williams was a jumper and our birthday person competed in another event.

[noone]

I am guessing Lia Manoliu, lots of clues fit. No idea about the photographer.

[rhymans]

The problem was in getting over the idea that this athlete obtained a medal in the same Games as Yvette Williams in 1952, but medals wouldn't occur until the next decade. It's the evergreen Lia Manoliu

[DoubleRBar]

Lia Manoliu was born 89 years ago today in what is now called Moldova (Romania in 1932). Very well done, noone. Manoliu was the first track & field athlete to compete in six Olympic Games. She did competed in Helsinki in 1952 in the discus and took sixth place. I never said she won a medal in Finland.

She was ninth place in the discus at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics and then won an Olympic bronze medal in Rome (1960).

At the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games, she won another Olympic bronze medal in the discus and four years later she won the gold medal at the 1968 Mexico City Games. She won the gold medal on her first throw in 1968 and had three fouls in that final.

Her final Olympics came in 1972 (Munich) where she took ninth place in the discus.

The fairly famous photographer that shared the same initials with Lia Manoliu was also famous for her animal rights activism, but even more famous for the man she married.

Thank you noone and rhymans.

[noone]

The 2008 gold medalist would be LaShawn Merritt. Still don't know the photographer. I know approximately one female photographer, Annie Leibowitz.

[DoubleRBar]

LaShawn Merritt is indeed the Olympic gold medalist from Beijing with the same initials as Lia Manoliu. The female photographer was born about 80 years ago (September) and died of cancer in Tucson, Arizona the same year that Manoliu passed away (1998). I believe her husband was more famous than she (the photographer) was.

Thank you, noone.