Mary Heath
Irish athlete and aviator
Irish athlete and aviator
Soviet track and field athlete Galina Petrovna Bystrova won a bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics in the pentathlon.
Eve Rimmer was one of New Zealand’s greatest paraplegic athletes, winning 32 medals – including 22 gold medals – for athletics and swimming at international sporting events. A household name during the late 1960s and 1970s, she was also an outspoken advocate for the rights of the disabled in sport and society.
In 1992, Candace Cable became the first woman to medal at the summer and winter Paralympic Games. During her career, she competed at nine Paralympics and won 12 medals in track and field, alpine skiing, and Nordic skiing. Cable also won 84 marathons, including six Boston Marathon victories.
Japanese track and field athlete Kinue Hitomi held world records in several events in the 1920s and ’30s and was the first Japanese woman to win an Olympic medal, as well as the first woman to represent Japan at the Olympics.
One of America’s foremost female athletes, Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias was an Olympic gold medal winner who broke world records in multiple sports and went on to found the Ladies Pro Golf Association.
Angela Madsen was an American Paralympian athlete in both rowing and track and field. In her long career, Madsen moved from race rowing to ocean challenges before switching in 2011 to track and field, winning a bronze medal in the shot put at the 2012 Summer Paralympics. Madsen and her teammate Helen Taylor were the first women to row across the Indian Ocean. She died in June 2020 while attempting a solo row from Los Angeles to Honolulu.