By Mark Staniforth, PA Sport

Fanny Blankers-Koen was the sunshine queen of women's athletics.

The happy housewife followed in the footsteps of Jesse Owens 12 years earlier by winning four gold medals at the London Olympics in 1948.

The bubbly Dutch housewife achieved a range of honours which, more than half a century later, remain unrivalled in women's track and field.

She took London by storm, grabbing golds at 100metres, 200metres, 80metres hurdles and the sprint relay.

Her exceptional versatility was such that by the end of her career she had set a staggering total of 16 world records at eight different events.

Twice she bettered the 100 yards mark in 1944, and three times improved the 100metres mark to 11.5secs between 1943 and 1950.

She set one 200metres record, three each at 80metres hurdles and high jump, plus 100metres relay, pentathlon and long jump. In all she set 58 Dutch records.

And only world war prevented Blankers-Koen from rewriting the record books still further.

After all, by the time she romped to quadruple gold and lit up a London Games still finding it hard to emerge from the shadows of the struggles, Blankers-Koen was a 30-year-old mother of two.

She had made her Olympic bow 12 years earlier in Munich in the Games dominated by the brilliant Owens.

Her performances there were hardly earth-shattering. The 18-year-old finished sixth in the high jump and fifth in the 4x100m relay.

She was deprived of her prime by the loss of the 1940 and 1944 Games - but she would make up for that in England's capital.

Blankers-Koen competed 11 times - in heats and finals - in the space of just eight days, and never lost.

She was pushed only twice, first in the hurdles by Maureen Gardner of Great Britain, who took her to a photo finish, and then in the relay where she secured gold only by making up a huge deficit running the anchor leg.

Upon her return to Holland Blankers-Koen was feted as their Olympic heroine, with a large parade in a carriage drawn by four white horses. In Amsterdam, a statue was built to commemorate her achievements.

But the happy-go-lucky legend never quite understood what all the fuss was about.

"All I did was win some foot races," she said.