Tonique Williams-Darling

Tonique Williams-Darling (born Williams ; born January 17, 1976 in Nassau ) is a Bahamian sprinter and Olympic champion in the 400-meter run .

After she failed in the quarter-finals or preliminary run at the World Championships in Athens in 1997 and in Seville in 1999 and did not make it past the preliminary run at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney , she made it to the final at the 2003 World Championships in Paris / Saint-Denis and finished fifth.

2004 is the most successful year of her sporting career so far. In March 2004 she won the bronze medal at the World Indoor Championships in Budapest behind the Russians Natalja Nasarowa and Olesja Krasnomowez and improved her personal indoor record to 50.87 seconds.

In July 2004 Williams-Darling was able to break the winning streak of 400-meter world champion Ana Guevara at the Golden League meeting in Rome , who had previously remained unbeaten in 23 races. At the Olympic Games, Williams-Darling met Guevara again in the final on August 24, 2004. With a time of 49.41 s, she relegated her fiercest opponent Guevara to second place, 15 hundredths of a second behind. It won the first individual gold medal for the Bahamas in the history of the Olympic Games.

After the Athens Games, she continued her winning streak and won the Golden League meetings in Brussels and Berlin . At the ISTAF in Berlin on September 12, 2004, with her personal best of 49.07 seconds, she secured the IAAF Golden League award of US $ 500,000. She shared the jackpot winnings of US $ 1 million with the Swedish triple jumper Christian Olsson .

At the World Championships in Helsinki in 2005 , she won the gold medal over 400 meters in 49.55 s before Sanya Richards (USA) and Ana Guevara. She repeated her victory from the previous year at the Olympic Games. At the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne in 2006 she won silver behind Christine Ohuruogu (ENG).

Tonique Williams-Harding is 1.62 m tall and has a competition weight of 57 kg. She graduated in 1999 at the Moore School of Business of the University of South Carolina and is the Bahamian athletes Dennis Darling married.

Web links

• Tonique Williams-Darling in the database of World Athletics (English)
• Photos by Tonique Williams-Darling