Dorothy Tyler-Odam

Dorothy Jennifer Beatrice Tyler, MBE (née Odam; 14 March 1920 – 25 September 2014) was a British athlete who competed mainly in the high jump.

Biography 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 jumped the highest and was the first to clear 1.60 meters, and would have won under modern countback rules, but under the 1936 rulebook a jump-off was called for, and Csák won the gold.

Shortly before the 1936 Olympic Games, Odam won her first British WAAA Championships title, becoming the national high jump champion at the 1936 WAAA Championships. She would go on to win another seven national high jump titles, spanning from 1936 until 1956.

In 1939 she broke the world record in the high jump with 1.66m, but Germany's Dora Ratjen allegedly broke her record quickly. Odam's world record was formally recognized by the sport's world governing body, the IAAF, in 1957. Her 1936 win also made her the first British woman to win an individual Olympic medal in athletics.

In 2012, she was the official starter for the London Marathon.

She died on 25 September 2014 aged 94 following a long illness.