Marlene Judith MathewsAO (later Willard; born 14 July 1934) is a retired Australian Olympicsprinter. She has been described as 'one of Australia's greatest and unluckiest' champions.[3][why?]
A few days after her 16th birthday at the NSW Championships, she ran a great race at the New South Wales Championships 100 yards final, placing second to world record-holder Marjorie Jackson and beating four members of the Australian Empire Games team, including Olympic medalist Strickland.[5]
Mathews was considered a certainty to gain selection to the 1952 Summer Olympics before a leg injury forced her out of competition.[6]
In 1954, recovered from her injuries, Mathews ran second to Jackson in the National 100 yards championship (and third in the 220 yards)[4] and was duly selected to run in her first international championships at the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. She was unlucky again, breaking down injured in her heat of the 100 yards.[1][4]
In a controversial move, she was left out of the gold-medal winning Australian 4×100 metres relay team as she was 'not considered a good relay runner" but soon after the Games she assisted an Australian team to world records for 4×200 metres and 4×220 yards relay events.[7]
She proved her versatility in the sprint events by setting a new world record at 400 metres with 57.0 seconds on 6 January 1957.[8]
On 20 March 1958, at the Australian Championships, she set a new world record over 100 yards with 10.3 seconds,[8] and two days later she ran 220 yards in 23.4 seconds, which was also a world record.[8] In both races, she defeated world-record holder and Olympic champion Cuthbert.
At the 1958 Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, Wales, Mathews took out the 100 yards and 220 yards, again beating Cuthbert.[1] She was ranked #1 in the world for both 100 metres[9] and 200 metres[10] in both 1957 and 1958.
Mathews' final top-level competition was at the 1960 Olympics in Rome, where she was eliminated in the 100 metres semi-finals.[1][4]
Mathews married fireman Barry Willard in 1958 but they later separated. She was an assistant manager of the Australian Olympic Team at the 1972 Olympics in Munich.[3] She became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 1979 for her services to athletics, and an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1999. Mathews was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1985[3] and into the Athletics Australia Hall of Fame in 2010.[11] In 1993, the State Transit Authority named a RiverCat ferry after Mathews. In February 2025 Rivercat "Marlene Mathews" was retired from service before being scrapped in July 2025.[12] In 2018 a bronze sculpture of her (and one of Betty Cuthbert) was unveiled at the Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney, Australia.[13] This makes them the first female athletes added to the bronze sculptures in the Sydney Cricket Ground precinct.[14]
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