Olympic champions Michael Johnson, Dan O'Brien and Babe Didrikson will be inducted with Australian Betty Cuthbert into athletics' inaugural Hall of Fame.
Olympic champions Michael Johnson, Dan O'Brien and Babe Didrikson will be among 24 athletes inducted into the Hall of Fame being opened by track and field's governing body later this year.
Australian Olympic sprinting champion Betty Cuthbert was one of 12 athletes initially announced as inaugural members of the Hall of Fame, being opened to celebrate the IAAF's 100th year.
Cuthbert, at the age of 18, won three gold medals at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, before adding a fourth in Tokyo in 1964.
There will be 24 athletes honoured as part of the IAAF's celebration of its centenary.
Along with Cuthbert, the dozen announced in early March included Jesse Owens, whose posthumous honour comes more than 75 years after he won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and showed up Adolf Hitler's idea of Aryan supremacy.
The other 10 were Abebe Bikila, Paavo Nurmi, Carl Lewis, Emil Zatopek, Al Oerter, Adhemar da Silva, Ed Moses, Fanny Blankers-Koen, Jackie Joyner-Kersee and Wang Junxia.
Johnson, O'Brien and Didrikson are among the remaining 12 to be revealed in a series of announcements to coincide with IAAF major events leading up to the November 24 induction ceremony in Barcelona.
Johnson won four Olympic gold medals and eight world championship golds and still holds the world and Olympic records in the 400 metres.
O'Brien won the Olympic decathlon gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games, and also won gold medals at the 1991, 1993 and 1995 world championships.
Babe Didrikson was an American athlete who achieved outstanding success in golf, basketball, and track and field. She won two gold medals and one silver for track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
Betty Cuthbert won the 100m and 200m at the Melbourne Games and anchored the gold-medal winning 4x100m relay team which set world records in the heats and the final.
After setting individual world records in the lead-up to the 1960 Rome Games, Cuthbert suffered an injury and failed to add to her medal tally, subsequently retiring.
But she came out of retirement to concentrate on the 400m, which was introduced to the women's program for the Tokyo Games, and she claimed the gold medal.
Cuthbert set 16 official world records, either as an individual or in relay teams, during her career.
Cuthbert, who suffers multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair, was honoured as one of the torchbearers inside the stadium during the 2000 Sydney Olympics.
