New Zealand Olympic legend Barbara Kendall has been recognised with a lifetime honour by the World Olympians Association.

Barbara, a three-time Olympic medallist, has been made an Olympian for Life by the WOA, an accolade bestowed to just five Olympians at each edition of the Olympic Games. 

The recognition is reserved for Olympians who have drawn on their Olympic experiences to make the world a better place by promoting the Olympic Values at every stage of their lives. 

Barbara has remained deeply involved in sport since she finished competing. She has served as a coach, ambassador, IOC Member, and has sat on numerous national and international sporting boards and commissions. 

“I’ve put my heart and soul into the Olympic movement and making the world a better place through sport, so to have that recognised at a global level is a real honour,” says Barbara. 

“When I first started athletes were to be seen not heard, we broke down a lot of barriers over the years and to see athletes now and the opportunities they have is just great. 

“It goes to show that if you want to make a difference, you can.” 

NZOC President Liz Dawson extended her congratulations to Barbara. 

“Barbara is one of our most successful Olympians and since competing has continued to give back to the movement. She embodies the Olympic spirit,” says Liz.

“We are incredibly proud to see her honoured as an Olympian for Life, this is testament to her longstanding contributions to the Olympic Movement and her relentless pursuit of excellence and equity in sport." 

Barbara's career spans five Olympic Games. She won a gold medal in Barcelona 1992, silver in Atlanta 1996, and bronze in Sydney 2000. Her 21-year career in windsurfing also saw her win 11 World Championship medals and 25 National titles. 

Off the water, her contributions to sports administration and athlete advocacy have been longstanding and varied. The NZOC congratulates her as an extremely worthy recipient of the Olympian for Life award. 

Following in the footsteps of her older brother Bruce, by three years, Barbara took up boardsailing in 1984, when she was 17, as a “fun way to see the world”.

She competed first in P class and later Starlings, in which she and her older sister, Wendy, once beat the boys in an Auckland championship. 

In 1987, Barbara decided to join the professional boardsailing circuit, finishing eighth in her first year. She was fourth in 1989 and improved to second in 1990. 

In the early 1990s boardsailing, and especially women's boardsailing, was very much a minor sport in most New Zealanders' eyes.

Barbara changed all that in 1992 when she burst into national prominence by winning the gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

It was New Zealand's only gold medal of those Games and she was the first New Zealand woman to win an Olympic gold medal since Yvette Williams 40 years earlier. 

To read more of her life and career click here.

She bowed out of Olympic competition at Beijing in 2008 with a sixth placing, no mean feat for a woman of 40, and became the first New Zealand woman to compete at five Olympics. She retired from boardsailing in May 2010, after 24 years at the top of her sport. 

Barbara has undertaken various roles on behalf of her sport over the years, including being a Sports Ambassador for Sport and Recreation New Zealand, and for a time being an official New Zealand boardsailing coach. 

She has earned all sorts of honours. She has won a multitude of national boardsailing titles, been named New Zealand Sailor of the Year in 1992 and 1998, and won the Halberg Award as Sportswoman of the Year in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002. She won the Lonsdale Cup in 1999. 

She was on the New Zealand Olympic Committee's athletes commission and in 2005 was appointed to the International Olympic Committee, as the Oceania athletes' representative, replacing Australian swimmer Susie O'Neill. She was elected an IOC member in July 2011 and took a place on the IOC Athletes Commission, Woman and Sport Commission and Sport and the Environment Commission. 

Kendall was inducted into the International Sailing Hall of Fame in 2007.