Fatima Whitbread at 60
The No.1 Olympic sport is full of stories of athletes who have battled through adversity to break a world record or make the podium at a global championship. Yet few can match the rags-to-riches rise of Fatima Whitbread.
She was born in London on March 3 in 1961, which means she celebrates her 60th birthday on Wednesday this week. Unwanted by her parents and abandoned as a baby, she was treated for malnourishment – an extraordinary start for someone who would go on to become one of the world’s strongest athletes.
Whitbread spent 14 years in children’s homes and suffered frequent hunger pangs during her early years. Somehow, though, she rose to become world record-holder and world champion in the javelin and a household name in the UK.
Some would say it was destiny. During a lesson in school she was told about Atalanta, a heroine of Greek mythology who could beat most men in a footrace and throw a spear further than they could shoot an arrow. The story inspired her and, coincidentally, her next lesson was PE, where she developed an interest in throwing the javelin.
Soon afterwards, she went to her athletics club to pursue it further and was put into contact with Margaret Whitbread, a former javelin thrower turned coach. They hit it off and their coaching relationship endured during her career. More than that, the young athlete moved into the Whitbread house in Essex, adopted the surname and began to regard her as a mum.
The child who had suffered from malnutrition gradually began to become stronger as she trained for the javelin during her teenage years. In domestic competition she had the perfect target too in the shape of Tessa Sanderson, the UK No.1 who was five years older.
During her early years in the event Whitbread struggled to beat Sanderson and lost to her 18 times on the trot in competitions but at the 19th attempt she beat her nemesis to take the UK title in 1983.
That same year Whitbread really began to make a name for herself. At the inaugural World Championships in Helsinki she scraped into the final as the last qualifier with her third throw but in the opening round of the final she threw 69.14m.
The mark survived as the leading throw for most of the contest until Finland’s Tiina Lillak, who was roared on by her home crowd, unleashed a 70.82m effort to overtake the Briton with her final throw.
The following year Sanderson won Olympic gold as Whitbread took bronze in Los Angeles. But Whitbread’s finest moments were yet to come.
At the European Championships in Stuttgart in 1986 Whitbread became the first British thrower to achieve a world record when she threw a huge 77.44m at just gone 9am in the qualifying round. Amazingly it was also her first UK record and she went on to throw 76.32m in the final to take gold ahead of the East German Petra Felke.
In 1987 the improving Felke regained the world record but Whitbread took gold at the World Championships in Rome with a best of 76.64m. By now Whitbread was one of the British public’s favourite sporting successes, not only due to her world record-breaking and gold medal-winning habit but her ‘Whitbread wiggle’ celebration. The 1987 campaign was capped off in style, too, when she was named BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
In 1988 Whitbread went to her third Olympics but injuries began to take their toll and she was took silver as Felke was crowned champion. Retirement followed but she went on to marry the British Athletics promoter Andy Norman and then returned to the public eye in 2011 to star in I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
More recently she has been a vocal supporter of the free school meals campaign that has been championed by footballer Marcus Rashford.
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