Anne-Marie Colchen
 Colchen (top left) with the 1953 French women's basketball squad |
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| Medal record | ||
|---|---|---|
| Women's athletics | ||
Representing  France
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| European Championships | ||
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1946 Oslo | High jump |
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1946 Oslo | 4×100 m relay |
| Women's basketball | ||
| FIBA World Championships | ||
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1953 Santiago | |
Anne-Marie Colchen-Maillet (8 December 1925 – 26 January 2017) was a French track and field athlete and women's basketball player. She became France's first high jump champion at the 1946 European Athletics Championships and held the French record for the event for ten years. She represented France in high jump at the 1948 Summer Olympics. In basketball she was the highest scorer at the 1953 FIBA World Championship for Women, helping France to third place. She was a member of the French national team for the European Women's Basketball Championship in 1950, 1952, 1954 and 1956.
Born in Le Havre, she joined up with the local sports club, the Association Sportive Augustin Normand (ASAN). Standing at a height of 1.82 m (5 ft 11 1⁄2 in) – unusually tall for a woman in that era – she found she had a natural talent for high jump and basketball.
Colchen first emerged as a high jumper in the mid-1940s and she ranked in the world's top twenty in 1944, clearing five feet (1.525 m). She rose to the peak of the international scene with a gold medal win at the 1946 European Athletics Championships, holding off the Soviet all-round athlete Aleksandra Chudina with her winning height of 1.60 m (5 ft 2 3⁄4 in). As of 2015, Colchen remains the only French woman to win a European high jump title (Jacques Madubost won the men's event in 1966). She followed this with a silver medal in the 4×100 metres relay, running alongside her compatriots Léa Caurla, Claire Brésolles and Monique Drilhon to finish behind a Fanny Blankers-Koen-led Dutch team.
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