28 September 2014

Two-time Olympic high jump medallist Dorothy Tyler has sadly passed away after a short illness at the age of 94.

Tyler won silver medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games and the 1948 London Games and in both years she cleared the same height as the gold medallists but missed out on the Olympic title on count-back. She was the only woman to win Olympic medals either side of the Second World War.

Her stellar high jump career included setting a new world record in 1939, Odam of 1.66m at a meeting in Brentwood, Essex. She won gold medals at the Empire Games for England in 1938 and 1950, as well as silver in 1954.  She also established a British Olympic record by competing in four Games: 1936, 1948, 1952 and 1956. NUTS, the track statisticians’ union, voted her Britain’s greatest woman athlete of all-time in 1959.

Tyler is survived by her husband of 74 years, Dick, who is 97, her sons David and Barry and four grandchildren. Her funeral is likely to take place in a fortnight, in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.