European Athletics is greatly saddened to learn the death of Romanian high jump legend Iolanda Balas, at the age of 79.
Balas won two Olympic gold medals in Rome 1960 and Tokyo 1964 with 14 career world records and is also known for having gone unbeaten for 140 straight competitions over a span of almost 11 years!
In 1958, she cleared 1.83m and became the first woman to clear six feet. Later that year, she won her first major title at the European Athletics Championships in Stockholm and repeated that success in Belgrade 1962.
Her personal best performance came in 1961 when she improved her world record to 1.91m in Sofia on 16 July. It remained unbeaten for a decade until Austria’s Ilona Gusenbauer broke it in 1971.
Her second Olympic gold medal came at the 1964 Games in Tokyo, the crowning moment of an almost perfect career.
Balas retired in 1967 and eventually served as President of the Romanian Athletics Federation from 1988 to 2005.
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