{"id":400642,"date":"2024-06-07T00:07:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-07T00:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=400642"},"modified":"2024-06-07T01:04:37","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T01:04:37","slug":"epic-feat-that-marked-birth-of-olympic-icons-nickname","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=400642","title":{"rendered":"Epic feat that marked birth of Olympic icon's nickname"},"content":{"rendered":"

To mark 100 days from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Nine.com.au asked you what your favourite Olympic memories were in a survey. The response was overwhelming! We chose 50 of them to re-live, one a day, before new memories are made in Paris. Scroll on for today's memory.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

B\ufeffetty Cuthbert's Olympic<\/a> expectations were so modest as excitement built throughout Australia ahead of the Melbourne 1956 Games that she bought herself a ticket, planning to attend as a spectator.<\/p>\n

But as the sights and sounds of track and field<\/a> lit up the MCG, thousands of ticket-holders were watching in awe of Cuthbert, an 18-year-old whose glorious performances in Melbourne earned her the nickname "Golden Girl".<\/p>\n

Pumping her arms furiously, lifting her knees \ufeffhigh and tearing along with her distinctive forward-leaning action, the speedster from the Sydney suburb of Ermington swept up three gold medals.<\/p>\n

Watch the video at the top of the page to see how B\ufeffetty Cuthbert conquered Melbourne!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Cuthbert grabbed Australia's first gold medal of the Games when she charged to victory in the 100m. She broke the world record in her heat, clocking 11.40 seconds, before winning the blue-riband event with a time of 11.50.<\/p>\n

She also took to the 200m final as the event's world record holder, having claimed the mark with a run of 23.20 two months earlier. She triumphed in the 200m with a time of 23.40, matching the Olympic record of Australia's Marjorie Jackson, the winner of the sprint double in Helsinki four years earlier.<\/p>\n

\"Betty<\/p>\n

In the 4x100m relay, an Australian team consisting of Cuthbert, Shirley Strickland, Fleur Mellor and Norma Croker overmatched those who had travelled from overseas. The team set a new world record with a time of 44.90 in the heats, before clinching gold and lowering the world record to 44.50.<\/p>\n

The relay triumph made Cuthbert the first Australian to win three gold medals at a single Olympic Games.<\/p>\n

Injury ruined her Rome 1960 ambitions, but she travelled to Tokyo in 1964 and conquered a new distance, scampering to victory in the 400m with a time of 52.01, shattering the Olympic record.<\/p>\n

Reflecting on her one-lap dash in Tokyo, she described it as the only perfect race of her life.\ufeff<\/p>\n

Cuthbert remains the only Australian to have won four Olympic gold medals in athletics.\ufeff<\/p>\n

She was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985 and attained "legend" status in 1994.<\/p>\n

She died in 2017 at the age of \ufeff79, after a decades-long battle with multiple sclerosis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To mark 100 days from the opening ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Nine.com.au asked you what your favourite Olympic memories were in a […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":400326,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400642"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=400642"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":400646,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400642\/revisions\/400646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/400326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=400642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=400642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=400642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}