Denise Lewis

Dame Denise Rosemarie Lewis (born 27 August 1972) is a British sports presenter, sports administrator and former track and field athlete, who specialised in the heptathlon.

Lewis won the Sunday Times "Sportswoman of the Year" a record three times, in 1994, 1998 and 2000.

Ghada Shouaa, the 1996 Olympic champion, pulled out after only 20 metres of her heat.

After a poor performance in the high jump, clearing only 1.75m, some way off her personal best, Lewis was in eighth place, 152 points behind Barber who had increased her lead.

In the third event, the shot put, Lewis recorded a distance of 15.55m, placing her second, 30 points behind Natallia Sazanovich and 45 points ahead of former world champion Sabine Braun.

Barber's distance of 11.27m put her in eighth place.

In the final event of the day, the 200 metres, Lewis recorded a time of 24.34 sec. Braun's time placed her in sixth position.

A strong run by Natalya Roshchupkina moved her from sixth position to second, pushing Lewis into third place.

At the end of the first day, the points scored were:

The first event on the second day was the long jump.

Lewis's best jump was 6.48m, marginally behind Yelena Prokhorova and Sazanovich.

Eunice Barber, struggling with injury, withdrew after this event.

In event six, the javelin, Lewis achieved a throw of 50.19m.

With her closest rivals some way further back she moved into first place, with Sazanovich 63 points behind in second place and Prokhorova in third a further 83 points behind.

In the final event, the 800 metres, Lewis ran with the lower part of her left leg bandaged due to a calf and Achilles tendon injury, aiming to stay close enough to the race leaders to maintain her points advantage.

Prokhorova won the race convincingly and when Lewis crossed the line behind Sazanovich it was not clear, at first, if Lewis's time of 2:16.83 was enough to retain first place.

After the individual points had been calculated, it was announced that Lewis had won with a total of 6,584 points.

Prokhorova was second with 6,531 (53 points behind Lewis), and Sazanovich was third with 6,527 (4 points behind Prokhorova).

She was also runner up in 1996.

She was selected as "Female Athlete of the Year" by the British Athletics Writers' Association (BAWA) four times, in 1996, 1997, 1998, and 2000.

Lewis was voted "Sportswoman of the Year" three times by the Sports Journalists' Association (SJA), in 1997, 1998 and 2000, a joint-record.

With Dame Kelly Holmes, Christine Ohuruogu and Paula Radcliffe, Lewis enjoys acclamation as one of the "golden girls" of British athletics and, in 1998 and 2000, was runner-up in the BBC Sports Personality of the Year.

For services to sport, Lewis was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 1999 New Year Honours, Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2001 New Year Honours and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours.

She won the gold medal in the heptathlon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, was twice Commonwealth Games champion, was the 1998 European Champion, and won World Championships silver medals in 1997 and 1999.

She was the first European to win the Olympic heptathlon, though Europeans, including Briton Mary Peters, had won the Olympic pentathlon precursor event.

Her personal best score for the heptathlon is 6,831 points, set at the Décastar meeting in 2000.

That is a former British record and ranks her third on the all-time British lists behind double World, double Commonwealth Games champion Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Olympic, three-time World and European champion Jessica Ennis-Hill.

Along with these two and pentathletes Mary Rand and Dame Mary Peters, Lewis is recognised as one of Britain's greatest female multi-eventers, and the first in the line of British global champions in heptathlon.

The first day of the 2000 Summer Olympics heptathlon was 23 September.

In the first event, Lewis rerecorded 13.23 seconds for the 100 metres hurdles, to be in second place behind the world champion, Eunice Barber, who had finished in 12.97 seconds.

In 2000, Lewis was also presented with the Freedom of the City of Wolverhampton.

In 2003, Lewis was put forward as a candidate in the BBC Midlands great Midlander of all-time award but lost to the eventual winner, Reginald Mitchell, the inventor of the Supermarine Spitfire.

At the 2004 Olympics, Lewis was suffering from a number of injuries and withdrew from the competition after the long jump.

Teammate and training partner Kelly Sotherton took bronze.

In 2010, she was inducted into the Wolverhampton Sporting Hall of Fame, while in 2011, she was inducted into the England Athletics Hall of Fame.

Since retiring from athletics, she has undertaken work on television and other media work, and is now a regular athletics pundit for BBC Television, including during the Olympic Games in London 2012, Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020.

In addition to her media work, Lewis is president of Commonwealth Games England which is the official Commonwealth Games Association for England at the Commonwealth Games and, since 2023, president of UK Athletics, the governing body for the sport of Athletics in the United Kingdom.

In 2013, Lewis was honoured at the annual Wolverhampton Famous Sons & Daughters Awards ceremony.

In 2014, she was presented with an honorary degree from the University of Wolverhampton.

At the inaugural British Ethnic Diversity Sports Awards (BEDSA) in 2015, Lewis became the first recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award.