One
of the greatest women track and field athletes of all time,
Irene Kirszenstein-Szewinska won medals in four
consecutive Olympic Games—a feat
never accomplished before by any runner,
male or female. Her seven medals
place her eleventh all-time and first in
track and field among women Olympic
athletes.
Eighteen years old at the 1964
Tokyo Olympics, Kirszenstein won a
gold medal as a member of Poland’s
World record-setting 4x100-Meter Relay
team (43.6), a silver medal in the 200-Meter sprint (her
mark of 23.1 set the
European event record), and a silver
medal in the Long Jump.
In Mexico City four years later,
now
Kirszenstein-Szewinska, Irena won the
200-Meter event, setting a new World record (22.5), breaking her own World
mark set three years earlier. She also took
a bronze medal in the 100-Meter event.
After giving birth to a son in 1970,
Kirszenstein-Szewinska won bronze
medals in the 200-Meter Sprint at the
1971 European Championships and the
1972 Olympics in Munich.
In 1974, she changed to the 400-Meter event and was the
first woman to
break 50 seconds at that distance. Two
years later, at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal,
she set a new World record (49.29)
winning the 400-Meter gold medal.
In all, Kirszenstein-Szewinska won
three Olympic gold medals, two silvers,
and two bronzes, as well as five
European gold medal championships
and five other medals—a record unequaled
in the history of women’s track
and field.
Other highlights of her extraordinary
career include tying the 100-Meter
World record in 1965 (11.1); lowering
her own World record in the 200-Meter
(22.0) in 1974; lowering her 400-Meter
World mark (49.0) at the World Championships
in Dusseldorf in 1977.
She
won 38 consecutive 200-Meters from
1973 to 1975 and 36 consecutive 400-Meters from 1973 to
1978—both the
longest winning streaks in these events
in recorded history.
Kirszenstein-Szewinska was Poland’s
Athlete of the Year in 1965. The
same year, Tass, the official Soviet press
agency, named her the Outstanding
Woman Athlete in the World. She was
World Sport Magazine’s Sportswoman of
the Year in 1966, United Press International’s
Sportswoman of 1974, and the
1974 Track & Field NewsWoman Athlete
of the Year. In 1992, she was elected to
the International Women’s Sports Hall
of Fame.
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