Pauline Threapleton-Wainwright

Pauline Threapleton started running seriously as a teenager at Salt Girls’ High School, Saltaire, Yorkshire. She later competed for the Ebenezer Youth Club in Bradford, and then the Airedale Harriers. She only took up hurdling in 1950 and, by the end of her first season, had won both the Yorkshire and West Midlands 80 metres county titles, reducing the latter’s record by half-a-second. Threapleton was also an excellent high jumper and in 1950 finished second to Dorothy Odam-Tyler at a Birchfield Harriers floodlight meeting.

Threapleton went on to win the Yorkshire 80 metres hurdles title six years in succession, 1950-55, and in 1953 was also the high jump champion. Additionally, she won the Northern Counties title three years in succession, in 1951-53, and regained it in the Olympic year, 1956. That year, she also finished third in the WAAA hurdles, the year after finishing second. They were her only two podium finishes in the Championships. In both her Olympic appearances (1952 and 1956), Threapleton was eliminated after finishing fifth on each occasion in her respective first-round heats.

Threapleton was a shorthand typist at the James Drummond & Sons, a Bradford firm of worsted spinners and manufacturers. She married Alan Wainwright in November 1953.

Personal Best: 80H – 11.2 (1952).