Debbie Brill

Debbie Brill, OC (born March 10, 1953) is a Canadian high jump athlete who was the first North American woman to clear 6 feet, at age 16. Her unique reverse jumping style was called the "Brill Bend" and was developed independently about the same time as Dick Fosbury was developing the similar Fosbury Flop in the USA. This style of jumping revolutionized the event and is now almost exclusively the technique of elite high jumpers. Because Fosbury won the Gold medal at the 1968 Olympics, he is more often credited with the invention. She is an eleven-time national champion of Canada.

Brill was born in Mission, British Columbia and started competing provincially in British Columbia in 1966, at age 13. The following year, she competed at the Canadian national level. Her first international competition was in 1968, at age 15.

Brill has held the Canadian National High Jump record, both indoor at 1.99 metres (6 ft 6 in) and outdoor at 1.98 metres (6 ft 6 in), since 1969, establishing her first Canadian High Jump record when she was 16 years old. Her Canadian High Jump records remain unbroken. She was ranked in the top 8 female jumpers in the world for 12 years in a career that spanned 21 years, from 1967–1988. Brill's jump, outdoors, of 1.98 m. in 1984 would have tied the 5th highest jump by a woman in an outdoors meet in the summer (August) of 2010.

In 1979 Brill won a gold medal in the World Cup athletics championship (the precursor to the World Athletics Championships) held in Montreal, Canada. She was the world's number one high jumper for 1979.

Brill was ranked number one in the world by Track and Field News going into the 1980 Olympics which Canada boycotted because of the U.S.S.R.'s military involvement in Afghanistan.

In January 1982 Brill established a World Indoor High Jump record of 1.99 meters in Edmonton, Alberta, 5 months after giving birth to her first son, Neil. She has a daughter, Katelin, and a son, Jacob. She is married to a physician, Dr. Douglas Coleman.

Debbie missed only one year, being ranked in the world's top ten for the high jump (1976), from 1970 to 1985, with the exception of 1973 & 1974 when she briefly retired, and in 1981 when she was pregnant. She was ranked in the top 5, 6 times.

In 1983, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada in recognition for being "Canada's premier woman high-jumper". In 2012, she was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.