Mildred Singleton, 70; High Jumper Won Gold Medal in 1956 Olympics

Mildred Louise McDaniel Singleton, an Olympic high-jump champion and one of America’s top female athletes in the 1950s, has died of cancer. She was 70.

Singleton died Sept. 30 at a convalescent home in Pasadena, according to Woods-Valentine Mortuary in Pasadena.

Singleton won the gold medal in the high jump at the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. An Atlanta native, she married Louis Singleton in 1958 and moved to California, where she launched a 32-year career teaching physical education in the Pasadena schools.

“She was a self-made athlete,” said Olga Connolly, the 1956 women’s gold medalist in the discus. “She was lovely and lithe, a very graceful athlete. She had so much grace -- I remember that. Maybe she exemplified the philosophy of those times that athletics was a form of art.”

Singleton was born Nov. 4, 1933. She excelled in basketball and track in high school and at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. She was the U.S. women’s high-jump champion in 1953, 1955 and 1956, and won the gold medal in the high jump in the Pan American Games in 1955.

Nonetheless, she went to the 1956 Olympics as a relative unknown. That, she said, was her plan.

In an interview with the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, she said: “I only jumped to win first place. So [rivals] had no idea how high I could jump. This was my plan. I wanted to be unknown. While my ... competitors were watching each other, I was going to steal the high jump. And I carried it out.”

Iolanda Balas of Romania, who would go on to win a gold medal at the 1960 Games in Rome and the 1964 Games in Tokyo, drew acclaim before the 1956 Olympics, but finished fifth.

Singleton, just as she planned, won the gold medal in Melbourne, setting what was then a world record of 5 feet, 9 1/4 inches.

Singleton missed on her first attempt at the record height. An official “sort of smiled,” as if she had no chance, she told the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame. That got her focused.

“I decided, hey, I’m going to jump this just for him. So I went back and I measured off my steps and I looked back and I looked at the bar. High-jumping is purely psychological. You can tell yourself it’s a height you know you can clear. So as I looked at the bar, it started to get lower. And something inside said: Go!

“So from the minute I took off from the ground, I knew I had cleared the bar. It’s the same way when you shoot a basketball -- as soon as it leaves your hand, you know when it’s going to fall in. The only thing I had to worry about was clearing my back leg. I kicked

“And I came down and I got up and I bowed to the official who had smiled on my first miss.”

Singleton was inducted into the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame in 1983. That year, she was also inducted into what is now the National Track & Field Hall of Fame.

Information on survivors was not available.