PHOTO: TT News Agency
Many of you probably don’t know who Gunhild Larking is.
But there is one image that has made her world famous for 70 years.
Here is the story of the Swede who charmed the whole world and was forced to end her career, only 20 years old.
Started already as a 13-year-old Gunhild Larking take an interest in athletics and above all high jump. She competed for Jönköping AIF but never had a coach and was therefore forced to learn on her own, but that didn’t stop her from reaching the world elite at a very young age.
Swedish Olympic hero
At just 16 years old, Gunhild became Sweden’s best high jumper on the women’s side and won five straight SC golds from 1952 to 1956. She also made her debut at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and had the great honor of representing Sweden at the very highest level.
The young Swede came ninth in her Olympic debut, but four years later she would write blue and yellow sports history. The 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne were unforgettable for Larking who competed under the shortened name Gun.
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The famous picture
The Swede achieved his greatest success by coming fourth in the Olympics at a height of 1.67, which meant a new Swedish record, and it was the same height as second and third. During the competitions, a picture was taken of Gunhild Larking that made her a world celebrity overnight and almost 70 years later people are still talking about this picture:
The picture of the blonde athlete from Sweden was published on a full page in the magazine Life’s Christmas issue in 1956, which was printed in ten million copies and received enormous distribution around the world. Gunhild was offered several different modeling offers but that would also be the end of her sports career.
“Still getting letters”
After the Olympic Games in Melbourne, it turned out that she had been pregnant during the competition and was expecting her first child. Fourth place in the 1956 Olympics was the very last thing she did as a high jumper, as she chose to end her sports career after that, aged just 20.
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Today, Gunhild Larking is 88 years old and remembers back to that special picture that made her world famous, further down in the article you can see how she looks today.
– I heard how it clicked when I was sitting there on the inner plane, then I saw that it was a cameraman with a long telephoto lens some distance away. But I was so focused on my next jump at that point that I didn’t care. Once the magazine came out… When I realized that I was in Life itself… Of course you were overwhelmed. And you can believe I got fan mail, people even called from the US wanting me over for modeling jobs. But I didn’t want to be part of that, I was shy by nature and had no thought of becoming a photo model, never. I was already tired of the writings about my appearance, the talk about long legs, being judged only by that and not by my achievements, my value as a human being. Incidentally, I didn’t think I was particularly handsome… I only understood that much later, that I probably wasn’t that crazy after all, she says in an interview with Värnamo Nyheter.
– I can still get fan mail. It happens that I get the occasional long-distance letter because of that photo, imagine how it could be, she says with a laugh.
The famous photograph is still circulating on social media today and everyone is amazed that it was taken as long ago as 1956. The original photo was black and white, but it has been colored in recent years and given new life.
“Easy to understand that she got a model offer, so beautiful,” writes a user on X.
“I’ve seen the picture several times before, but probably can’t get enough of it. Incredibly nice picture of a very beautiful (and good at athletics) woman,” writes another.
“It’s hard to believe that she is 88 years old today,” writes a third.
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This is what she looks like today:
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