Barbara Kendall: As Good As Gold

She was the golden girl-next-door, who brought home Olympic medals in every hue. Now Barbara Kendall’s daughters are making their own sporting mark. Suzanne McFadden talks to the one-time “rebel” about new challenges, the toll her glory days have taken, and the “best ever” advice she lives by.

- Suzanne McFadden

Barbara Kendall is wearing a navy blue blazer, its lapels adorned with precious pins decorated in gold, silver, and bronze. It’s a special occasion – and the first time in 27 years she’s taken the Olympic badges out of their boxes.

New Zealand’s Olympic “rainbow girl”, having won a medal in every hue, Barbara feels it’s finally time to wear the pins with pride.

She’s put on her Olympic jacket for the funeral of her idol, and friend, Yvette Corlett, who died in April, just days short of her 90th birthday.

As Yvette Williams, she was the first New Zealand woman to win Olympic gold, competing in the long jump in Helsinki in 1952. It would be another 40 years until her incredible achievement was repeated by another Kiwi woman – this time a 24-year-old, sunny blonde by the name of Barbara Kendall, racing a windsurfer in Barcelona.

Yvette was one of the first people to come round and congratulate Barbara when she arrived home in Auckland back in 1992 with her own gold medal. Together, they were New Zealand’s first “golden girls”.

So Barbara thought it was only right that on the day she bid farewell to the woman who inspired her to Olympic greatness, she should finally bring out her honors. “It was poignant, and it was necessary, to wear them today,” she says.

You see, Barbara has always been a bit of a rebel when it comes to ritual and ceremony. “I’ve always been very anti-wearing pins to display who I am,” she says. “But now that I’m 51, I realize I actually have to stand up and honor tradition. I think it’s important for the younger generation to understand the importance of tradition because I’m afraid that we’re losing it.” Young women like her two teenage daughters, Samantha and Aimee.