Fatima Whitbread

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Fatima Whitbread

Fatima Whitbread (born March 3, 1961 in Stoke Newington ) is a former British athlete in the discipline of javelin , world and European champion and Olympic participant.

Whitbread was born to a Cypriot-Turkish mother and a Cypriot-Greek father and had a difficult childhood. As an infant, she was left in an apartment by her mother and found by a neighbor who turned the authorities on. She spent the next four months in a hospital because of malnutrition and was then sent to a children's home. She was in the Hertfordshire Children's Home until she was five years old . After that she returned to her birth mother after Ockingdon in the county of Essex . Because she was sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend, she was sent to a children's home again. At the age of eleven, she began training in javelin throwing. At the age of 14 she was adopted by the former javelin thrower Margaret Whitbread (née Callender).

Fatima Whitbread was the direct competitor of Tessa Sanderson in her career in the early 1980s . When she first participated in the World Championship in Helsinki in 1983 , she was beaten with the last litter by the Finn Tiina Lillak . She won gold medals at the 1986 European Athletics Championships in Stuttgart and the 1987 World Athletics Championships in Rome. In the same year she was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year , Sportsman of the Year in Great Britain.

Her best throw of 77.44 m at the European Championships in 1986 was not surpassed by any British athlete until 1999, when the new javelin was introduced in 1999.

In 1984 she won the bronze medal at the Olympic Games in Los Angeles behind her compatriots Tessa Sanderson (gold) and Tiina Lillak (silver).

In 1988 Whitbread achieved Olympic silver at the Olympic Games in Seoul behind Petra Felke (gold), then GDR , and ahead of Beate Koch (bronze), also GDR.

Several injuries forced her to give up her previous career in 1990, but she continues to work in athletics. She is now married with one son and lives in Shenfield , Essex.

In 2011 she took part in the eleventh season of the British television show I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! part.

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Individual evidence

  1. I'm a Celebrity 2011: Full line up and pictures of stars including Mark Wright, Dougie Poynter, Jessica-Jane Clement in their jungle gear , November 9, 2011, Daily Mirror