Iolanda Balaș

Iolanda Balaș

Iolanda Balaș at the 1964 Olympics
Personal information
Born	12 December 1936 (1936-12-12) (age 87) Timișoara, Romania
Height	1.85 m (6 ft 1 in)
Weight	72 kg (159 lb)
Sport
Sport	Athletics
Event	High jump
Achievements and titles
Personal best	1.91 m (1961)
Medal record Representing Romania Olympic Games 1960 Rome High Jump 1964 Tokyo High Jump European Championships 1958 Stockholm High Jump 1962 Belgrade High Jump 1954 Berne High Jump Universiade 1959 Torino High Jump 1961 Sofia High Jump

Iolanda Balaș (Romanian pronunciation: [joˈlanda ˈbalaʃ], later Söter, Hungarian: Balázs Jolán, born 12 December 1936) is a former Romanian athlete, Olympic champion and world record holder in high jump, who is considered one of the greatest high jumpers ever.

Early life

Balaș was born in Timișoara into a family of mixed Romanian and Hungarian ancestry. Her mother, Etel Bozó was a homemaker, while her father, Frigyes, was originally a locksmith, who served in the Hungarian army, before he was captured and brought to the Soviet Union and later to Hungary, where he settled in Budapest. Balaș tried to reunite the family and move to Hungary, but although she managed to obtain the Hungarian passport in 1947, she was not allowed to leave the country. When asked in an interview in 2005, whether she was thinking about defection, she said that it came to her mind; however, that action could have resulted in serious retaliation against her relatives she would have left behind, and she did not want that.

Career

In 1953 she transferred from Timisoara club "Electrica" to CCA (CSA Steaua). After finishing fifth in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, she won two Olympic gold medals at Rome in 1960 and Tokyo in 1964. At the 1964 Olympics she competed with a torn tendon, which forced her later to withdraws from the 1966 European Championships. Nevertheless, between 1957 and 1966, Balaș won 150 consecutive competitions, not including qualifying competitions or exhibitions. She improved the world record 14 times, from 1.75 m to 1.91 m, and equalled it once outdoors and once indoors. She was the first woman to jump over six feet. Her technique was a sophisticated version of the scissors technique.

Her record of 1.91 m, set in 1961, lasted until the end of 1971 (beaten by Ilona Gusenbauer from Austria), when jumpers with a more efficient technique (the straddle technique, and later the Fosbury style) took over.

After retiring from competitions in 1967, Balaș married her former coach Ian Söter, and taught physical education in Bucharest. Between 1988 and 2005 she was president of the Romanian Athletics Federation.

External links

Iolanda Balaș on 2004 Romanian stamps