Fatima Whitbread the biography

Fatima Whitbread, Javelinist, - Biography

British athlete

Height: 1.68 Metres, 5 foot 6
Weight: 77 KG

Born 3 March 1961, London,

Fatima Whitbread is a British former javelin - thrower thrower & multi medal-winner.

Abandoned in a north London flat as a baby by her Turkish Cypriot mother, Whitbread spent many unloving years in & out of children's homes before finally meeting her mother again, it transpiring that she [Whitbread's mother] had been attatched to a big social stigma after conceiving Whitbread via an affair with a Greek Cypriot, resulting in her being disowned by her friends & naming her son as the father on the birth certificate.

Her mother was violent towards her from the first day that they met, threatening to cut her throat if she didn't look after her brother & sister while she [Whitbread's mother] went out to meet men, one of whom drunkenly raped Whitbread, again provoking her mother to threaten to cut her throat.

At the age of thirteen she was adopted by the Whitbread family & she spent her teenage years in Chadwell St Mary in Essex after her mother asked the family to take her daughter when it became clear that she was spending a lot of time with sports coach Margaret.

She broke the World Record with a throw of 77.44m in the qualifying round of the 1986 European Championships (where she also won the final) & became World Champion in 1987. She became well-known in the UK for her celebratory wiggle after defeating arch-rival Petra Felke in these events. Her performances in 1987 led to her being voted winner of the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year award.

Whitbread had previously won the silver medal at the inaugural World Championships in 1983. She was also well-known for her rivalry with fellow English javelin thrower Tessa Sanderson, who won the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles with Whitbread finishing in bronze medal position. In the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Whitbread won the silver medal behind Felke, who had broken the world record in the interim.

She married Andrew Norman & has a son, Ryan, born in South Africa.

She was once a governor of King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, which is close to where she grew up in Brentwood.

This site was written in May 2007

Here are some pictures of Fatima Whitbread, which is not spelt Fatima Witbred

Fatima Whitbread picture

Picture of Fatima Whitbread