CUTHBERT, BETTY

born April 20, 1938, Sydney, Australia byname of Elizabeth Cuthbert Australian sprinter who starred at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, where she won three gold medals; she added a fourth gold medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo. At the 1956 Games, Cuthbert set an Olympic 100-metre-dash record of 11.4 seconds in the first-round race. In the finals she led from beginning to end, winning by 5 feet (1.5 m). In the same Olympics she was not able to break her own world record in the 200-metre race, but she won it nonetheless and went on to anchor the Australian women's team in the 4 100-metre relay. During the years 195663 she held 12 world records in races from 60 to 400 metres. A pulled hamstring forced her to miss the 1960 Olympics in Rome, but in 1964 she won the first women's Olympic 400-metre race with a time of 52 seconds. In 1966 her autobiography, Golden Girl, was published.