Marlene Mathews

Early career

Mathews attended Fort Street High School in Sydney and began competing in athletics in the late 1940s.

At the 1950 Australian Championships, she placed fourth, behind Shirley Strickland, in the 80 m hurdles and ran in the winning state relay team, but was not selected for the 1950 British Empire Games team.

A few days after her 16th birthday at the NSW Championships, she ran a great race at the New South Wales Championships 100 yards final, placing second to world record-holder Marjorie Jackson and beating four members of the Australian Empire Games team, including Olympic medalist Strickland.

Mathews was considered a certainty to gain selection to the 1952 Summer Olympics before a leg injury forced her out of competition.

International career

In 1954, recovered from her injuries, Mathews ran second to Jackson in the National 100 yards championship (and third in the 220 yards)

She proved her versatility in the sprint events by setting a new world record at 400 metres with 57.0 seconds on 6 January 1957.

On 20 March 1958, at the Australian Championships, she set a new world record over 100 yards with 10.3 seconds, and 200 metres in both 1957 and 1958.

Mathews' final top-level competition was at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where she was eliminated in the 100 metres semi-finals. In 1993, the State Transit Authority named a RiverCat ferry after Mathews. In February 2025 Rivercat "Marlene Mathews" was retired from service before being scrapped in July 2025. In 2018 a bronze sculpture of her (and one of Betty Cuthbert) was unveiled at the Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney, Australia. This makes them the first female athletes added to the bronze sculptures in the Sydney Cricket Ground precinct.

Statistics

Personal bests