Tessa Sanderson


Theresa Ione "Tessa" Sanderson, is a British former javelin thrower and heptathlete. A six-time Olympian in the javelin from 1976 to 1996, she won the gold medal in 1984 for Great Britain, and in 1996 she became the second track and field athlete, after discus thrower Lia Manoliu, to compete at six Olympics. She is the first black British woman to have won an Olympic gold medal.
During her career he had an ongoing rivalry with Fatima Whitbread. Sanderson has made numerous television appearances as a guest, and worked as a sports reporter for Sky News when it first aired in 1989. Sanderson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1985 New Year's Honours, following her Olympic gold, raised to Officer in the 1998 New Year's Honours for her charity work, and later to Commander in the 2004 New Year's Honours for her services to Sport England.

Early life

Sanderson was born on 14 March 1956 in St Elizabeth, Jamaica, of Ghanaian ancestry. Her parents left Jamaica to find work in England when Sanderson was five, and she was in the care of her grandmother until going to live her parents in Wednesfield at the age of six. Her P.E. teacher at Ward's Bridge High School, Barbara Richards, noted her talent for athletics and encouraged her, also making threats of putting Sanderson in after-school detention if she did not train, an approach that Sanderson later said helped her. She first threw a javelin at the age of 14, when betting with a friend for a bag of chips over who would be able to throw it further.

Athletics career

She was a member of Wolverhampton & Bilston Athletic Club. In 1972, aged 16, Sanderson won the English Schools Intermediate javelin championship. She made her senior international debut in the event at the 1974 British Commonwealth Games, finishing fifth. Later that year, she finished 13th at the 1974 European Athletics Championships. Sanderson broke the UK javelin throw junior record five times, achieving in 1974. She became the national record holder in 1976, throwing. She went on to achieve ten new UK senior records and five Commonwealth records.
1976 saw Sanderson's Olympic debut, at 1976 Summer Olympics. Aged 20, she was the youngest of the competitors in her event, and threw to finish ninth. At the 1978 Commonwealth Games she won her first major gold medal with a throw of, the first time that England had won gold in the women's javelin at the games since 1962. She went to the 1980 Summer Olympics rated as the third-best woman javelin thrower of all time, but failed to meet the qualifying standard for the final, achieving only with her first throw, and having her other two attempts declared "no-throws".
After the 1980 Olympics, she approached Wilf Paish at the Carnegie Institute of P.E. in Leeds to coach her. He agreed to became her coach, and she moved to live with his family. In 1981, she suffered an Achilles tendon rupture in her left leg and also broke a bone in her throwing arm. An operation on her Achilles tendon was unsuccessful, and she required another operation. The injuries prevented her from competing for twenty-two months. Sanderson was fourth at the 1983 World Championships, where her rival Fatima Whitbread won silver. At the 1983 World Championships, she injured her Achilles tendon again, and had both operations on both Achilles tendons a few days after the end of the competition.
When Sanderson won the gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympics in the javelin, it was Great Britain's first Olympic win in a throwing event since the instigation of the modern Olympics in 1896. She set a new Olympic record with her throw of. Whitbread won bronze. She also became the first black British woman to have won an Olympic gold medal. Sanderson also won gold at the 1986 Commonwealth Games, with Whitbread taking silver.
In March 1987, Sanderson announced that she would be focusing on the heptathlon rather than the javelin throw. Shortly before that, she had moved to London, and was looking for a career change to television or promotional work. She later threatened to boycott athletics events, for which she was being paid £1,000 each by British Athletics whilst Whitbread was being paid £10,000 per event, and agreed a new deal at the start of June. At the Dairy Crest games in August, Whitbread, who had been undefeated during the season, injured her shoulder whilst Sanderson won the event and then announced that she would be training with Mick Hill in Italy for the world championships. Whitbread won the World Championship gold, with Sanderson finishing fourth. By this time, former pop star Adam Faith was engaged as Sanderson's agent.
Sanderson burst the skin around her ankle, exposing her Achilles tendon, around ten days before taking part in the 1988 Summer Olympics as defending champion. She failed to qualify for the final, and left the competition limping, with blood visible on the bandage on her injured ankle. She left the stadium on crutches before the medal ceremony, where Whitbread was presented with the silver medal after finishing as runner-up to Petra Felke.
Having announced after the 1988 Olympics that she would retire from the javelin throw, Sanderson made an unexpected return to competition in 1989, at the McVitie's International Challenge, where she finished third. At the 1990 Commonwealth Games, a throw of was enough for Sanderson to retain her title. At the 1990 European Athletics Championships Sanderson finished twelfth, but was later upgraded to eleventh after Felicia Ţilea was disqualified.
Her fifth Olympic appearance, at the 1992 Summer Olympics, set a new record for Olympic appearances by a British athlete. Her best throw of was almost five metres less than the winning distance achieved by Silke Renk. At the 1992 World Cup Sanderson won gold with a throw of, nearly three metres further than any other competitor.
At the 1996 Summer Olympics she became the second track and field athlete, after discus thrower Lia Manoliu, to compete at six Olympics, but did not qualify for the final. She also failed to qualify for the final at the 1997 World Championships, which was her last international appearance.
An article by Alan Hubbard in The Observer in 1990 said of Sanderson and Whitbread that "their hate-hate relationship has been one of the most enduring in British sport", citing Sanderson's perception that Whitbread received preferential treatment from the British Amateur Athletic Board, whose promotions officer was a family friend of Whitbread; and the support that Whitbread and Whitbread's mother publicly supported Sue Howland who had been allowed to compete at the 1990 Commonwealth Games. In 2009, Tom Lamont wrote in The Guardian that "Whitbread and Sanderson were always uneasy rivals and the enmity that developed during their overlapping careers became as famous as their achievements, and seems to survive in their retirement".
Sanderson retired from competition in 1997, her rival Whitbread having retired five years earlier. She had also competed in pentathlon and heptathlon events, but not internationally. Her career-best javelin throw was in Edinburgh on 26 June 1983.

Sports administration

Sanderson served as Vice-Chairman of Sport England from 1999 to 2005. In 2006, she started an academy in the Newham, London that helped to find and train athletes to represent Britain in the 2012 Summer Olympics. In September 2009, The Tessa Sanderson Foundation and Academy was established, with the aim of encouraging young people and people with disabilities to take up sport, and providing mentoring and support.
From 2009 to 2013, Sanderson organised an annual 10km race in Newham, with part of the route being through the Olympic Park. The 2013 event attractied 3,000 participants representing 45 different nationalities. However, the event was cancelled in 2014, with Sanderson claiming that the local authority, Newham Council, had been delaying meetings about the event, and had been looking to double the fee payable. Sanderson was appointed as a board member of the Olympic Park Legacy Company chaired by Baroness Ford, to "develop and manage" the Olympic Park following the 2012 Olympics.

Media work

Sanderson was a guest on television shows including A Question of Sport, Punchlines, The Krypton Factor Olympic Celebrity Special, Sporting Triangles, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, Busman's Holiday Celebrity Special, Catchphrase Celebrity Special, Celebrity Wife Swap and Bullseye.
When Sky News was launched in 1989, she worked as a sports reporter for the channel. She also appeared alongside Cilla Black as a co-host on ITV's Surprise Surprise. In 2005, she took part in the one-off special, Strictly African Dancing, as part of the Africa Lives season on the BBC. She performed a "traditional 'dance celebrating the return home of the menfolk'" and was voted into third place by the viewers. Sanderson starred in the fitness videos "Cardiofunk" "Body Blitz" with Derrick Evans.
She appeared in "Billy's Olympic Nightmare", a one-off exclusive BBC Red Button episode of EastEnders which was aired on 16 July 2012. and was a contestant in Dancing on Ice goes Gold program on ITV on 22 July 2012. In 2018, Sanderson featured in Channel 5's reality series Celebrity 5 Go Barging. At 58 years of age, she began working as a model for the Grey Model Agency.

Honours

Sanderson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 1985 New Year's Honours, following her Olympic gold, raised to Officer in the 1998 New Year's Honours for her charity work, and later to Commander in the 2004 New Year's Honours for her services to Sport England.
Sanderson is an honorary graduate of the University of Wolverhampton and was made an Honorary Fellow of London South Bank University in 2004. In 2004 she was presented with a Sunday Times Sportswomen of the Year Lifetime Achievement award. In Wednesfield there is a housing estate located near where she started learning the javelin throw, Sanderson Park, named after her. There is also a road named after her in Wandsworth Road, South London, Tessa Sanderson Place.

Personal life

Sanderson's autobiography, Tessa: My Life in Athletics, was published in 1986. In 1990 Sanderson was awarded £30,000 in damages by the High Court of Justice over newspaper claims that by starting an affair with Evans, who later became known as Mr. Motivator, she had "stolen another woman's husband." Sanderson contended that her affair with Evans had begun only after his marriage had broken up.
On 3 May 2010, she married Densign White, former Olympic judo athlete, at St. Paul's Cathedral in London. Her bridesmaids were her fellow Olympic teammates Sharron Davies, Kelly Holmes and Christine Ohuruogu. She and White are the parents of twins Cassius and Ruby Mae. Her nephew, Dion Sanderson, is a footballer who made his debut for Wolverhampton Wanderers in October 2019.

National titles (Javelin throw)

International competitions (Javelin throw)

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