Ann-Sofi Pettersson-Colling had a very successful international gymnastics career representing Sweden in the 1950s. Her successes began at the 1950 World Championships, where she took gold in the uneven bars and the team all-around (with Evy Berggren, Vanja Blomberg, Karin Lindberg, Hjördis Nordin, Göta Pettersson, Ingrid Sandahl, and the non-Olympian Gunnel Ljungström), and silver in the individual all-around as Ann-Sofi Pettersson. Her next stop was the 1952 Helsinki Olympics, where she won gold in the team portable apparatus (alongside her 1950 World Championship squad, with Gun Röring replacing Ljungström) and had a best individual finish of joint-14th in the horse vault (with Italy’s Licia Macchini). At the 1954 World Championships, she shared gold in the vault with Tamara Manina of the Soviet Union.
By the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, Pettersson was known as Ann-Sofi Colling and she took silver in the team portable apparatus alongside Lindberg, Berggren, Eva Rönström, Doris Hedberg, and Maude Karlén. Individually, she shared bronze in the horse vault with Hungary’s Olga Tass-Lemhényi, which made her, as of 2020, the only Swedish female Olympic gymnastics medalist in an individual event. Domestically, she won numerous national titles between 1951 and her 1958 retirement and later worked as a doctor.
Sweden