Williams was born on 25 April 1929 in Dunedin. She grew up there and attended Otago Girls' High School. While at high school, Williams played several sports, making the top netball team and playing for Otago and the South Island. Williams also represented Otago, the South Island and New Zealand in basketball.
Athletics career
Williams joined the Otago Athletic Club in early 1947, mainly for social reasons. Two months later, she came to national attention when she won the shot put at the New Zealand athletics championships. She went on to win 21 national titles across 5 disciplines: shot put, javelin, discus, long jump and the 80 m hurdles. With 21 New Zealand titles, she is the joint second-most successful New Zealand female athlete at that level, with Beatrice Faumuina and Melissa Moon, behind Val Young. Jim Bellwood, who had moved to Dunedin in late 1947 or early 1948, became her trainer. When Bellwood moved to Auckland in 1952 to teach at Avondale College, Williams followed, boarding with an aunt and uncle in Devonport. Controversially left out of the New Zealand team for the 1948 Olympic Games in London, Williams won the long jump title at the 1950 British Empire Games in Auckland. Her winning leap of broke the national, Empire Games, and British Empire records. At the same competition, she also won the silver medal in the women's javelin, with a throw of. In 1951 Williams jumped at a meet in Melbourne, the third-best distance ever by a woman at that time, increased her New Zealand shot put record, and also became the New Zealand discus record holder. At the 1952 New Zealand championships, Williams became the first woman in history to jump over more than once, winning the long jump title with a distance of, but the distance was not recognised as a world record as it was wind-assisted. Also in 1952 she recorded a score of 4219 points in the pentathlon, setting a New Zealand record that stood for 10 years. Williams won the gold medal in the long jump at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki; her winning distance of 6.24 m was a new Olympic record and 1 cm short of Fanny Blankers-Koen's world record set in 1943. Also at Helsinki, Williams finished in sixth place in the shot put and 10th in the discus throw. In February 1954, Williams broke the women's long jump world record at Gisborne, New Zealand, with a leap of 6.28 metres. Later that year she travelled to Vancouver for the 1954 British Empire and Commonwealth Games, winning gold medals in the long jump, discus, and shot put, all with Empire Games record performances, and finishing sixth in the 80 m hurdles. She announced her retirement from athletic competition in November 1954. At the time she ranked number one in world track and field history in the long jump, fifth in the pentathlon, 12th in the discus throw and 19th in the shot put.
