From the late 1940s until the early 1960s Polish gymnast Danuta Nowak-Stachow represented several clubs in Kraków. During the 1950s Nowak-Stachow became a nine-time national champion, winning titles in the individual all-round (1957–58), vault (1957), balance beam (1955, 1958), free exercise (1957), and parallel bars (1957–59). In 1956 she competed at the Melbourne Olympics, winning bronze in the team portable apparatus event. She also placed fourth in the team event and 10th on the uneven bars at the Games. Four years later Nowak-Stachow returned to the Olympics for the 1960 Roma Games, where she placed fifth in the team event.
Nowak-Stachow had grown up believing that her father, an officer in the Polish Navy, had died at the beginning of World War II in 1940. Her mother then remarried and moved to Germany, with Danuta being raised by her uncle. Once the war had ended, however, it transpired that her father was alive after being rescued by a British warship, and was living in England. Nowak-Stachow later met her mother in Hamburg and was reunited with her father after winning her Olympic medal.
Poland