Alice Coachman

Birth Date:
09.11.1923
Death date:
14.07.2014
Length of life:
90
Days since birth:
36706
Years since birth:
100
Days since death:
3586
Years since death:
9
Extra names:
Alice Coachman, Alice Davis
Categories:
Sportsman
Nationality:
 american
Cemetery:
Set cemetery

Alice Marie Coachman (November 9, 1923 – July 14, 2014) was an American athlete. She specialized in high jump, and was the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. In 2002 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

Born in Albany, Georgia, Coachman dominated the AAU outdoor high jump championship from 1939 through 1948, but was unable to compete in the Olympic Games as they were cancelled in 1940 and 1944 because of World War II. In the high jump finals of the 1948 Summer Olympics, Coachman leaped 1.68 m (5 ft 6⅛ in) on her first try. Her nearest rival, Great Britain's Dorothy Tyler, matched Coachman's jump, but only on her second try. Coachman was the only American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in athletics in 1948.

Coachman also excelled in the indoor and outdoor 50 m dash and the outdoor 100 m dash. Representing Tuskegee University, Coachman also ran on the national champion 4 x 100-meter relay team in 1941 and 1942. Coachman was an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, inducted in 1998 during the sorority's international conference.

She died in Albany, Georgia on July 14, 2014 of cardiac arrest after respiratory problems. She also had a stroke a few months prior for which she received treatment from a nursing home.

 

Source: wikipedia.org

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