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Former Romanian athlete, Olympic champion and world record holder in high jump Iolanda Balaş Soter died at 79. She was considered one of the greatest high jumpers ever. She has fought some medical problems for several years.
Balaș was born in Timișoara into a family of mixed Romanian and Hungarian ancestry.
After finishing fifth in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, she won two Olympic gold medals in Rome in 1960 and in Tokyo four years later.
Nevertheless, between 1957 and 1966, Balaș won 150 consecutive competitions. She improved the world record 14 times, from 1.75 m to 1.91 m, and equaled it once outdoors and once indoors. She was the first woman to jump over six feet. Her technique was a sophisticated version of the scissors technique.
Her record of 1.91 m, set in 1961, lasted until the end of 1971 when it was beaten by Ilona Gusenbauer from Austria.
After retiring from competitions in 1967, Balaș married her former coach Ian Söter, and taught physical education in Bucharest. Between 1988 and 2005 she was president of the Romanian Athletics Federation.
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