Linda Haglund

Linda Haglund (15 June 1956 – 21 November 2015) was a Swedish Olympic sprinter.

Haglund became a member of Hanvikens SK, a track and field club located just south of Stockholm, at the age of 13. She showed great promise as a future sprinting star by recording, barefoot, 12.7 for 100 m at her first meet representing Hanvikens SK. Haglund's precocious talent was displayed on an international stage at the European Championships of 1971, held in Helsinki, Finland.

She was named on the Swedish track and field team that competed in Helsinki that year. She was 15 at the time and acknowledged as the youngest athlete of the meet. One year later, Haglund was appointed to the first of three Swedish Olympic teams: Munich, 1972. Her running career would take her to the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games, as well as those held in Moscow in 1980. Haglund had her best Olympic Games' showing with a fourth place in the Moscow Games' 100 m final.

Haglund participated in the World Cups of 1979 (Montreal) and 1981 (Rome) and was a five-time medalist at European Championships held in 1976 (gold), 1978 (silver), 1978 (silver), 1980 (silver), and 1981 (silver). Haglund was the captain for many years of the women's track and field team in Sweden and still holds Swedish records for 100 m - 11.16 (1980), 200 m - 22.82 (1978), and 60 m - 7.13 (1978). Haglund was one of very few sprinters to have beaten Evelyn Ashford. Haglund ran 11.06 (wind-aided) to better Jarmila Kratochvílová's 11.18 and Ashford's 11.25 in a 1981 meet in Berlin. Haglund was ranked 3rd (78), 5th (81), and 7th (79 & 80) in world rankings during her running career.

Career end

Haglund's running career was brought to an abrupt end in 1981 under a cloud of suspicion of an alleged "two pills", the result of a failed drug test. A Swedish board of adjudicators found Haglund innocent of charges and turned over their decision for consideration to an international track and field tribunal assembled in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1982. Hans Holmér and Haglund traveled to Jamaica to prove her innocent, with the right evidence for her not being charged in the matter, but in the 80s, there was other laws for sport than in society, Haglund and Holmer never regretted the "trip" it still was a victory for them to see and an eye opener for the world of sport. Hans Holmér, later to become known as the Chief of Special Investigation in the assassination of the Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986, was a principal in Haglund's defense, alongside Ulf Ekelund, the General Secretary of the Swedish Track and Field Federation.

Legacy

Haglund belongs to the Legends of "1956", a sports fraternity of outstanding Swedish athletes born in 1956: Björn Borg, Ingmar Stenmark, Thomas Wassberg and Frank Andersson. She is an honored member of the Swedish Sports Academy consisting of 100 athletes in 100 years of Swedish sport from 1899-1999, and was awarded the Victoria Scholarship in 1981.

Haglund was a painter and designer - she has had several exhibitions. She is inspired by Chagall, Russian born painter. Linda Haglund - linda gazelle design is inspired by Danish and Swedish design - the beauty of Scandinavia. She penned a book on health and wellness, Lindas må bra bok (Linda's feel good book), published by Prisma in 2007. Haglund was related to the Danish singer and actor Otto Brandenburg of Denmark and Danish writer and film-photographer Tom Eiling.

She was married to American sprinter Houston McTear from the 1980s until his death on 1 November 2015, aged 58.

Haglund died of cancer and a pulmonary hemorrhage on 21 November 2015, aged 59. Her cancer and lung issues was discovered first only six days before her death after she was transported by ambulance to hospital after feeling ill. She died only three weeks after her husband's death, also from cancer.