NORTHERN Ireland’s Olympic silver medallist and world record-holder Thelma Hopkins died in Canada on January 10, aged 88.
She was considered one of the greatest athletes to ever come out of the north, winning European and Commonwealth Games titles as well as her Olympic silver.
Born March 16, 1936, Hopkins arrived in Belfast almost by accident.
Her father, John, was a Wicklow man, and after the Shell Oil company transferred him to Hull, he married and had two daughters, Moira and Thelma. He was then moved again, this time to Belfast.
Thelma’s mother, Mildred, was heavily involved in hockey and by their early teens, both sisters were showing exceptional sporting talent.
Their proud father built a high jump area in the backyard so they could practise high jumping, which then was not for the faint-hearted, with the athletes leaping straddle-style over the bar and landing in a sand pit.
NIAAA coach, Franz Stampfl, spotted Thelma’s potential and in 1951, at the age of 15, she won the first two of her 33 Northern Ireland titles.
That same year, despite her youth, she was awarded her first international vest for the annual match against Scotland, setting her first Irish record of 1.55m.
The following year, she won the British women’s high jump title and was selected for the Olympic Games in Helsinki, where she came a respectable fourth in the high jump.
In the winter, she returned to hockey and won the first of 45 international caps. Over the next couple of years, she continued to improve as an athlete, and in August 1954, at the Commonwealth Games in Toronto, she took gold in the high jump at 1.67m and silver in the long jump, as well as competing in the 80m hurdles.
She again cleared 1.67m to take gold at the European Championships in Berne three weeks later, where she attempted to jump 1.74m, one centimetre higher than Russian athlete Aleksandra Chudina’s world record.
On a late-season tour of the Soviet bloc countries the following year, Hopkins proved the star of the team. She improved her own Irish high jump record to 1.70m in Moscow, where she was voted woman athlete of the meet. Three days later in Prague, after clearing 1.71m in the high jump, she again failed at the world record height of 1.74m.
Finally, on May 5, 1956, at Cherryvale Park, Belfast, it all came good on only her second competition of the season. After going higher and higher, the bar was set at 1.74m. With the watching crowd holding its collective breath, Hopkins soared over it with ease on her second attempt. She then attempted 1.75m but knocked the bar with her knee.
She was clearly in top form, but unfortunately, the Olympics were not until December that year. After taking a term off from her dental studies, she travelled to Australia in October for two months of acclimatisation and training. The woman’s high jump proved one of the most dramatic competitions of the Games.
In the stadium, every one of the 103,000 seats had been sold well in advance. By now, Thelma had lost the world record to the long-legged Yolanda Balas of Romania, who was the pre-event favourite.
However, an unheralded American, Mildred McDaniel, upstaged them both, clearing 1.76m.
Behind the American, the next six jumpers, including Hopkins had all failed at 1.70m and were tied on 1.67m. When Hopkins and the Russian Maria Pissaryeva remained equal in the jump-off, both were awarded silver medals. Balas was fifth.
Hopkins continued in the sport until 1964 but literally never reached those dizzying heights again.
In 1961, she jumped 1.65m for a bronze medal in the high jump at the World University Games in Sofia and the following year she enjoyed her final outing at both the European Championships in Belgrade and the Commonwealth Games in Perth.
At the Europeans, she had to pull out of the pentathlon with an ankle injury before the final event and later at the Commonwealth Games, she was sixth in the long jump and ninth in the high jump.
But her career was not entirely over and, in 1963, Hopkins was part of a combined north/south team which took on Belgium at Dublin’s Santry Stadium. Her victories in the high jump and 80m hurdles helped the Irish team to a memorable victory.
A couple of northern Irish titles at long and high jump in 1964, and that was it, although her hockey career continued for one year more when she was part of a combined Great Britain and Ireland team that toured the USA in 1965.
Hopkins later married and emigrated to Edmonton, Canada, where she had three children, and worked with special needs children.
She returned to Belfast on a regular basis and was present in 2006 when a plaque was unveiled at Cherryvale Playing Fields to commemorate her world record.
