Olympics London 1948 High Jump women ALICE COACHMAN (Amateur footage)

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• published: 03 Jul 2011
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Gold Alice Coachman (USA) Silver Dorothy Tyler Odam (GBR) Bronce Micheline Ostermeyer (FRA) Alice Marie Coachman (born November 9, 1923 in Albany, Georgia) is an American former athlete. She specialized in high jump, and was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. In 2002 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project Coachman dominated the AAU outdoor high jump championship from 1939 through 1948, but was unable to compete in the Olympic Games as they were cancelled in 1940 and 1944 because of World War II. In the high jump finals of the 1948 Summer Olympics, Coachman leaped 1.68 m (5 ft 6⅛ in) on her first try. Her nearest rival, Great Britain's Dorothy Tyler, matched Coachman's jump, but only on her second try. Coachman was the only American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics in 1948. Coachman also excelled in the indoor and outdoor 50 m dash and the outdoor 100 m dash. Representing Tuskegee Institute, Coachman also ran on the national champion 4 x 100-meter relay team in 1941 and 1942. Coachman is an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, inducted in 1998 during the sorority's international conference. Dorothy Jennifer Beatrice Tyler nee Odam MBE (born 14 March 1920) is a British athlete who competed mainly in the High Jump. She was born in Stockwell, London. Odam competed for Great Britain in the 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin, Germany where she won the silver medal behind Ibolya Csák. She repeated this feat in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London making her the only woman to win Olympic athletics medals before and after the war. Odam was also twice a gold medallist at the British Empire Games, winning at Sydney in 1938 and Auckland in 1950. Micheline Ostermeyer (23 December 1922 -- 17 October 2001) was a French athlete and concert pianist. A great-niece of the French author Victor Hugo, and a niece of the composer Lucien Paroche, Ostermeyer, who was Jewish, was born in Rang-du-Fliers, Pas-de-Calais. At the insistence of her mother, she began learning piano at the age of 4, and at 14 she left her family's home in Tunisia to attend the Conservatoire de Paris. After the outbreak of World War II, she moved back to Tunisia where she performed a weekly half-hour piano recital on Radio Tunis. It was during her return stay in Tunisia that Ostermeyer began participating in sports, competing in basketball and track and field events. After the war, she continued her participation in athletics while resuming her education at the Conservatoire. She competed in a range of contests, eventually winning French titles at running, throwing and jumping events. In 1946, she placed second in the shot put at the European Athletics Championship in Oslo, as well as winning the Prix Premier at the Conservatoire. The 1948 Summer Olympics were Ostermeyer's finest hour as an athlete. She won gold medals in the shot put and discus throw (despite having picked up a discus for the first time just a few weeks before the event), and a bronze medal in the high jump. Her performance was only overshadowed by that of Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals at the same Olympics. After winning the shot put, she concluded the day with an impromptu performance of a Beethoven concert at her team's headquarters. She retired from sports in 1950 after having won two medals at that year's European Championships, and continued to pursue a career in music. Her athletic prowess damaged her reputation as a concert pianist, however, and she even avoided playing anything composed by Franz Liszt for six years because she considered him too "sportif". She toured for fifteen years before personal commitments, including the death of her husband, led her to take a teaching job, a post she held until her retirement in the early 1980s. In her final years she emerged from retirement to give a series of concerts in both France and Switzerland before her death in Bois-Guillaume. A latter descendant continues in the athletic tradition. Samuel James Ostermeyer currently participates in numerous road events for Kirkstall Harriers, Leeds, England, and sits proudly at the top of their in-house championship standings.