Tessa Sanderson

Theresa Ione Sanderson (born 14 March 1956) is a British former javelin thrower.

Theresa Ione Sanderson was born on 14 March 1956 in St Elizabeth, Colony of Jamaica.

Her parents left Jamaica to find work in England when Sanderson was five.

She was cared for by her grandmother until she went to live with her parents in Wednesfield (then in Staffordshire) at age six.

Barbara Richards, her physical education teacher at Ward's Bridge High School, noted her talent for athletics and encouraged her to succeed; Richards threatened to place Sanderson in after-school detention if she did not train, an approach which Sanderson later said helped.

She first threw a javelin at age 14, betting with a friend for a bag of chips on who would be able to throw it further.

Sanderson was a member of Wolverhampton & Bilston Athletics Club, competing in the javelin throw and multi-event disciplines.

In 1972, aged 16, Sanderson won the Intermediate javelin event at the English Schools' Athletics Championships.

She was selected to compete in the javelin throw at the 1973 European Athletics Junior Championships the following year, where she reached the final but finished 12th with a throw of – well behind the winner, Tonya Khristova of Bulgaria, who threw.

Sanderson then decided to focus on the javelin throw rather than the pentathlon, partly because she thought that javelin competitions would provide more opportunities for travel.

She made her senior international debut in the javelin throw at the 1974 British Commonwealth Games, finishing fifth.

Later that year, Sanderson finished 13th in the 1974 European Athletics Championships.

She broke the British javelin-throw junior record five times, achieving a distance of in 1974.

She appeared in every Summer Olympics from 1976 to 1996, winning the gold medal in the javelin throw at the 1984 Olympics.

She was the second track and field athlete to compete at six Olympics, and the first Black British woman to win an Olympic gold medal.

Sanderson set the national record in 1976, throwing, and went on to set ten national records and five Commonwealth records.

The 1976 season saw Sanderson's debut at the Olympics.

Aged 20, she was the youngest competitor in her event and threw to finish ninth.

In July 1977, at the European Cup semi-finals in Dublin, she threw – a national record and the second-longest distance by a woman at the time.

At the European Cup finals, Ruth Fuchs of East Germany won the gold and Sanderson took the silver.

Later that year, Sanderson was the bronze medalist at the 1977 IAAF World Cup.

Sanderson won gold medals in the javelin throw at three Commonwealth Games (1978, 1986 and 1990) and at the 1992 IAAF World Cup.

She was runner-up at the 1978 European Athletics Championships, and competed in three world championships (1983, 1987, and 1997).

Sanderson was UK National Champion three times and AAA National Champion in amateur athletics ten times.

She set five Commonwealth records and ten British national records in the javelin, as well as records at the junior and masters levels.

Sanderson won her first major gold medal with a throw of in the 1978 Commonwealth Games, the first time England had won Commonwealth gold in the women's javelin since 1962.

A few weeks later, Sanderson took silver at the 1978 European Athletics Championships behind Fuchs; she was the bronze medalist at the 1979 European Cup again behind Fuchs, both of them losing out to Romanian Éva Ráduly-Zörgő.

Selected for the 1980 Summer Olympics, she failed to meet the qualifying standard for the final, reaching only with her first throw and having her other two attempts declared no-throws.

After the 1980 Summer Olympic Games, Sanderson asked Wilf Paish of the Carnegie Institute of Physical Education in Leeds to become her coach, and lived with his family once he agreed.

A throw of was enough for Sanderson to win at the 1981 Pacific Conference Games.

At the 1981 European Cup, she was runner-up behind Antoaneta Todorova of Bulgaria who made a world-record throw of.

She also competed in the pentathlon and heptathlon, setting UK and Commonwealth records for the heptathlon twice in 1981.

Later that year, Sanderson had an achilles tendon rupture in her left leg and broke a bone in her throwing arm.

Surgery on her Achilles tendon was unsuccessful, and she required another operation; the injuries prevented her from competing for 22 months.

After returning, Sanderson achieved her career-best javelin throw of at the Tarmac Games in Edinburgh on 26 June 1983.

It was the third-longest throw by a woman at the time, when the record was thrown by Tiina Lillak of Finland ten days previously.

During her career, Sanderson had a rivalry with fellow Briton Fatima Whitbread, who took the bronze in the 1984 Olympics.

Sanderson was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1985 and became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2004 New Years Honours.

Outside athletics, Sanderson has made several guest television appearances, and was a sports reporter for Sky News when it began broadcasting in 1989.

She was Vice-chair of Sport England from 1999 to 2005, and later established the Tessa Sanderson Foundation and Academy, which aims to encourage young people and people with disabilities to take up sport.