Great Olympians

Biographies - DID

Jan Diddens

Vasile Didea

Valery Antonovich Didenko

Édouard Didier

Lucien Didier

Roberto Di Donna

Jørn Didriksen

Mildred Ella "Babe" Didrikson

B. 1914-06-26, Port Arthur, Tex, USA; D. 1956-09-27
Track and Field (2 gold, 1 silver)

	1932	HP
80 m Hurdles	gold	9600
Javelin Throw	gold	9600
High Jump	silver	6000
		25200

Before Los Angeles, she came to the US national championships and entered no fewer than eight events, all to be performed within three hours. All alone, she won the team competition ahead of a team comprising 22 members.
At Los Angeles, she was only allowed to enter three events, and she almost won all three. In the high jump, she cleared the same height (a world record) as fellow American Jean Shiley, but was classed second because of an 'illegal' jumping style (although she did get a share of the world record and a silver medal). Afterwards the two athletes decided to saw both medals in half and join the two halves.
She is the only athlete ever to win medals in a running, a jumping and a throwing event, and still she was enraged that she could only enter three events.
She later became famous under her married name Zaharias as a golfer and won seventeen international titles between 1934 and 1950.
Her nickname "Babe" was given to her at age 14, after Babe Ruth, because she also excelled at Baseball!
The "O" in her name should be an "E", since she is of Norwegian descent.  She kept the change after the mistake was made in highschool.

Jón Diðriksson

Written 2001-02-07 - last modified 2023-04-04

This page is part of the site "Full Olympians" by Herman De Wael. See here for a full Introduction.