Tamara Danilova

Tamara Danilova (born July 30, 1939 in Leningrad, USSR now known as St. Petersburg, Russia) is a former Soviet, now Russian athlete specializing in throwing events. She competed for the Soviet Union at the 1972 Summer Olympics in the discus throw, finishing fourth in the competition. The winner of that competition was the world record holder Faina Melnyk, but during the first round of the competition, it was Danilova who had set the new Olympic record at 62.64m, surpassing the record of Argentina Menis set in qualifying two days earlier. Her record was brief as Menis would improve the record two throws later and again in the fourth round, only to have Melnyk pass them all on the next throw to take the gold.

Melnyk would later go on to set the Masters world record in the W35 division eight years later just after the Moscow Olympics. Danilova had to wait another sixteen years after the fall of the Soviet Union before she set her first Masters world record, in the W55 division in 1996. That record of 43.36m still stands. Later Danilova set the W65 (37.62m) and W70 (33.80) world records that also still stand. When she surpassed the W70 mark in 2009, it had previously been held by Rosemary Chrimes, also a 1972 Olympic finalist.