Denise Lewis

Denise Lewis 2011

Denise Lewis (born August 27, 1972 in West Bromwich ) is a former British heptathlete and Olympic champion .

Lewis learned ballet and tap dance as a child . After joining a local athletics club as a teenager and trying a few disciplines, she decided to go into heptathlon. She competed in her first competition in 1989 and achieved a promising 5277 points. Her first international competition was the 1991 European Junior Championships, where she was fifth with 5476 points.

She experienced her international breakthrough at the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria. There she won the gold medal with 6325 points. The 1995 World Championships in Gothenburg brought a slight setback in performance development. She reached seventh place with 6299 points. At her Olympic premiere at the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta , she won the bronze medal and also competed in the long jump competition , but could not qualify for the final.

The 1997 World Championships in Athens brought a major duel with the German Sabine Braun , who was in the lead from the first discipline and did not give up this lead again. Denise Lewis won the silver medal. At the European Championships in Budapest in 1998 , she rose to the top podium and became the best heptathlete in Europe.

At the 1999 World Championships in Seville , she got a new competitor in the newly naturalized French Eunice Barber . One of the most exciting heptathlon competitions in the history of the world championships developed. After the first day, Barber was one point ahead of Lewis. On the second day, the French could clearly improve, and the reigning European champion Lewis became vice world champion again.

At the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000 , she was 51 points behind Belarusian Natallja Sasanowitsch in third place after the first day . Only in the penultimate discipline, the javelin , did Lewis take the lead, which she was able to defend in the final 800-meter run .

She had problems with injuries in the run-up to the Sydney Olympics. This should only increase in the years following their greatest triumph. The 2001 World Championships in Edmonton had to be canceled. In 2002 the reason for the cancellation of the European Championships in Munich was a pleasant one: she became the mother of a daughter.

In 2003, Denise Lewis returned to the athletics stage and scored 6282 points in Tallinn in her first competition since her Olympic victory in 2000. In the meantime, however, there was a new star in the heptathlon with Carolina Klüft from Sweden. Klüft won the 2003 World Championships in Paris and Lewis finished fifth.

At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens , Lewis wanted to defend her Olympic title. It should be their last big competition. Injuries continued to hinder her, but she still got into the Olympic competition well and was in third place before she had to abandon the competition. The bronze medal was won by Kelly Sotherton , her successor on the British team.

Even after this disappointment, she did not retire from active competitive sport. Only in June 2005, in the run-up to the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki , did she announce her resignation.

Denise Lewis is one of the most popular athletes in Great Britain , alongside Paula Radcliffe and Kelly Holmes . She was runner-up in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year election in 1998 and 2000, respectively . In the second season of the BBC dance show Strictly Come Dancing , she took second place in 2004.

Personal best

• 6831 points - Commonwealth heptathlon record
• 100 m hurdles : 13.13 s
• 200 m : 24.10 s
• 800 m: 2: 12.20 min
• Long jump: 6.69 m
• High jump : 1.87 m
• Shot put : 16.12 m
• Javelin throw: 51.13 m

literature

• zurgams (editor): Time leaps . 35 years of the Mösle all-around meeting in Götzis. Bucher Verlag, Hohenems 2009, ISBN 978-3-902679-23-9

Web links

• Denise Lewis in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Entry into the Hall of Fame for UK Athletics