Anne Pashley 安妮·帕什利

Anne Pashley (5 June 1935 – 7 October 2016) was a British track and field sprinter, who represented Great Britain at the1956 Summer Olympics. Following her track and field career, she made a second career as a soprano. Pashley was born on 5 June 1935 in Skegness, Lincolnshire, the younger of two daughters of Roy Pashley, an English teacher, and his wife Milly Pashley, who ran a holiday camp. She attended school in Great Yarmouth, where her athletic skills came to attention. In 1953, at the AAA championships in White City, Pashley equalled the British women's 100-yard record of 10.8 seconds. She took the bronze medal at the 1954 European Championships in Berne, Switzerland in the women's individual 100 metres, behindIrina Turova (Soviet Union) and Bertha van Duyne (Netherlands). At the 1956 summer Olympics, she and her teammates Jean Scrivens, June Foulds and Heather Armitage won the silver medal in the women's 4 × 100 m relay. Pashley retired from athletic competition soon after the Melbourne Olympics. Pashley them embarked on a second career as an opera singer, as a soprano. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music, and made her stage debut in 1959. She performed at Glyndebourne, Covent Garden and across Europe. Her work in concert opera included a 1972 performance of Sir Arthur Bliss' The Olympians. Pashley married fellow opera singer Jack Irons, a fellow Guildhall student, in 1959. The marriage produced a son, Leon, and a daughter, Cleo. The marriage lasted until Irons' death in 2005. Their son Leon died in 2013. Pashley's daughter Cleo survives her.