
On 23 July 1952 Yvette Williams won the gold medal for the long jump at the Helsinki Olympic Games. Three days later Sid Scales mused on the achievement in this cartoon published in the Otago Daily Times, Williams's home-town paper. She had already won a gold in the event at the 1950 Empire Games in Auckland, and at the Vancouver Empire and Commonwealth Games in 1954 she won three gold medals – in the long jump, shotput and discus. In that year she also broke the world record for the long jump. Williams's success made her a national heroine and confirmed ideas of New Zealanders as physically strong and adept.
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Alexander Turnbull Library
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H-721-030
Cartoon by Sid Scales
Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.
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