Dorothy Tyler-Odam

Dorothy Tyler, known by her maiden name Odam and later as Tyler-Odam (14 March 1920 to 25 September 2014), was a British athlete who competed mainly in the high jump. Born in Stockwell, London, she won Olympic silver for Great Britain in 1936 in Berlin, being the first to clear 1.60 metres but losing to Ibolya Csák in a jump-off, a result modern countback rules would have reversed. She won silver again at the 1948 London Games, making her the only woman to win Olympic athletics medals both before and after the Second World War, and she was the first British woman to win an individual Olympic athletics medal. She won eight national high jump titles between 1936 and 1956, two British Empire Games golds at Sydney in 1938 and Auckland in 1950, and set a world record of 1.66 metres in 1939, formally recognised by the IAAF in 1957. She was appointed MBE in 2002 and was official starter of the London Marathon in 2012.