Yvette Williams

Yvette Winifred Williams CNZM MBE (later Yvette Corlett, born 25 April 1929) is a former New Zealand athlete. A versatile sports person, she became the first woman from her country to win an Olympic gold medal and later held the women's long jump world record.

Williams was born in Dunedin in 1929, and she grew up in that city and attended Otago Girls' High School. In Auckland on 11 December 1954 she married fellow sportsperson Buddy Corlett; he played for the national basketball team. The couple had four children, including national basketball representative Neville Corlett, Auckland provincial rugby union player Peter Corlett, and Karen Corlett, who represented New Zealand in rhythmic gymnastics at the 1977 world championships. Her husband died on 9 May 2015. Her younger brother, Roy Williams, won the decathlon at the 1966 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica.

Track and field

As a schoolgirl, Williams showed little of her future athletics ability. However, she joined the Otago Athletic Club in early 1947, mainly for social reasons. Two months later, she came to national attention when she won the shot put at the New Zealand athletics championships. She would go on to win 21 national titles in all, across five disciplines, namely: shot put (1947–54), javeilin (1950), discus (1951–54), long jump (1948–54) and the 80 m hurdles (1954). With 21 New Zealand titles, she is equal with Beatrice Faumuina and Melissa Moon as the second-most successful New Zealand female athlete at that level, behind Val Young (35 titles).

Jim Bellwood, who had moved to Dunedin in late 1947 or early 1948, became her trainer. When Bellwood moved to Auckland in 1952 to teach at Avondale College, Williams followed him to that city, where she boarded with an aunt and uncle in Devonport.

Controversially left out of the New Zealand team for the 1948 Olympic Games in London, Williams won the long jump title at the 1950 British Empire Games in Auckland. Her winning leap of 19 feet 4 ⁵⁄₈ inches (5.91 m) broke the national, Empire Games, and British Empire records. At the same competition, she also won the silver medal in the women's javelin, with a throw of 124 feet 6 ³⁄₄ inches (37.97 m).

In 1951 Williams jumped 20 feet 1 ³⁄₈ inches (6.13 m) at a meet in Melbourne, the third-best distance ever by a woman at that time, increased her New Zealand shot put record, and also became the New Zealand discus record holder.

At the 1952 New Zealand championships, Williams became the first woman in history to jump over 20 feet (6.10 m) more than once, winning the long jump title with a distance of 20 feet 7 ³⁄₄ inches (6.29 m), but the distance was not recognised as a world record as it was wind-assisted. Also in 1952 she recorded a score of 4219 points in the pentathlon, setting a New Zealand record that would stand for 10 years.

Williams won the gold medal in the long jump at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki; her winning distance of 6.24 m was a new Olympic record and 1 cm short of Fanny Blankers-Koen's world record set in 1943. Also at Helsinki, Williams finished in sixth place in the shot put and 10th in the discus throw.

In February 1954, Williams broke the women's long jump world record at Gisborne, New Zealand, with a leap of 6.28 metres. Later that year she travelled to Vancouver for the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, winning gold medals in the long jump, discus, and shot put, all with Empire Games record performances, and finishing sixth in the 80 m hurdles. She announced her retirement from athletic competition in November 1954. At the time she ranked number one in world track and field history in the long jump, fifth in the pentathlon, 12th in the discus throw and 19th in the shot put.

Other sports

Williams represented Otago and the South Island in netball, and Otago, the South Island and New Zealand (1950, 1953–55) in basketball.

In the 1953 New Year Honours, Williams was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire, for services in women's athletics. She was appointed a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to athletics in the 2011 New Year Honours.

Williams was twice named the New Zealand Sportsman of the Year, for 1950 and 1952. She was inducted into the New Zealand Hall of Fame in 1990. In 2000, she was voted Otago Sportsperson of the Century.

Sports writer Peter Heidenstrom, author of the book Athletes of the Century, rates her as New Zealand's top athlete of the 20th century.

The "Yvette Williams Retirement Village" in the Dunedin suburb of Roslyn is named in her honour.

In 2013, the New Zealand Olympic Committee, in association with the Glenn Family Foundation, established the Yvette Williams Scholarship, to assist young athletes displaying both exceptional talent and need.