Thelma Hopkins (athlete)

Thelma Hopkins

Personal information
Full name	Thelma Elizabeth Hopkins
Nationality	British
Born	(1936-03-16) 16 March 1936 Kingston upon Hull, England
Medal record Women's athletics Representing Great Britain Olympic Games 1956 Melbourne High jump European Championships 1954 Bern High jump Representing Northern Ireland British Empire and Commonwealth Games 1954 Vancouver High jump

Thelma Elizabeth Hopkins (born 16 March 1936) is a Northern Irish athlete who competed in the high jump and the long jump. On 5 May 1956 she set a new world high jump record with a leap of 1.74 metres in Belfast, erasing the mark of 1.73 metres set by Aleksandra Chudina of the USSR on 22 May 1954. Her record was broken on 14 July 1956 in Bucharest by Iolanda Balaș of Romania.

Her achievement in breaking the world record is commemorated by a plaque in Cherryvale Playing Fields, South Belfast.

Hopkins was born in Kingston upon Hull. She competed for Great Britain in the 1956 Summer Olympics held in Melbourne, Australia, in the high jump event, where she won the silver medal jointly with Mariya Pisareva. In the 1954 Commonwealth Games she won a gold medal for Northern Ireland. As well as athletics she excelled at hockey where she was a regular choice for the Ireland women's national field hockey team, playing at forward and winning 40 caps. She also represented Ireland as an international Squash player.

She was one of many signatories in a letter to The Times on 17 July 1958 opposing 'the policy of apartheid' in international sport and defending 'the principle of racial equality which is embodied in the Declaration of the Olympic Games'.

References

• Brown, Geoff and Hogsbjerg, Christian. Apartheid is not a Game: Remembering the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign. London: Redwords, 2020. ISBN 9781912926589.