Dorothy Tyler, who has died aged 94, was one of Britain's foremost athletes of the 20th century. Tyler, who met Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, and whose family home was bombed by the Germans, was the only female athlete to win Olympic medals either side of the second world war. She was Britain's first individual Olympic medallist in women's athletics, she set a high jump world record that was not ratified for nearly 20 years, and also won gold medals in the Empire (now Commonwealth) Games 12 years apart, before becoming an innovative coach who worked with the great ballet dancers Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes. In the 1950s she was the first British woman to hold the qualifications to coach male athletes.
Her earliest successes were as Dorothy Odam, her maiden name. She was born in south London and spent all her life in the Mitcham and Croydon area. Tyler took up athletics as a girl "as a means of escape from home", in her own words. Her parents had a deteriorating relationship during her teenage years and her father left home when she was 18: she never saw him again.
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