Fatima Whitbred - Wonderful Woman No. 63

Fatima Whitbred - Born 1961
British Athlete and Television Personality

To be perfectly honest, naming another javelin thrower is a struggle. Fatima Whitbred is a woman who managed to get her sport into the public conciousness, capturing the hearts of the British people and becoming a household name.

In 1986, Fatima broke the word record from javelin throwing and the following year became world champion in her sport. Also in 1987, Fatima was voted the BBC's British Sports Personality of the Year. She was an Olympian winner of bronze and silver medals.

Her sporting achievements alone might have been enough to enter her into the Wonderful Women album but reading the following article and discovering what she had overcome in life before ever throwing a javelin really cemented her place here:

The Observer, March 2003

Having been abandoned as a baby, I spent the first 14 years of my life in children's homes. My biological mother left me in a flat in north London and after three or four days a neighbour noticed the noise I was making, rang the police, and I spent the next four months in hospital recovering from malnutrition.

My earliest memories are of living in a children's home in Hertfordshire when I was five. You never received Christmas cards, and nobody came to visit you, and, not having been told anything, you wondered what the situation was. One day I was told that I was going to meet my biological mother. This was the first time I realised I actually had one and it was a shock. I'd craved the love and attention of a mum and dad, and yet previously, when I'd asked, no one had told me anything.

I had always imagined a real mother figure - someone kind and loving. And because I only knew the English way of life I didn't expect her to be the large, foreign lady who wore cheap perfume and didn't speak English who I met that morning. It turned out she was Turkish Cypriot and had had an affair with a Greek Cypriot, and because Turks and Greeks didn't get on back then, her friends disowned her. It was obviously a big stigma because on my birth certificate, she named my half-brother as my father.

I was being moved to a home in Ockingdon, Essex, because the social workers thought I should integrate with my half-brother and sister who were living there at the time. It was supposed to be, 'Enjoy your next home, this is your mother,' and everything would be fine. But it wasn't. In the car over there, she hardly spoke and I looked out the window and cried.

When we arrived in Ockingdon, a house parent told me, 'Go into the garden and meet your brother and sister.' As I wandered into the garden, my mother grabbed me and said: 'This is your sister and if you don't look after her I cut your throat.' This was my introduction to my biological mother and from there things got worse.

When I was about nine or ten, the social services decided it would be a good idea for me to visit her with a view to a permanent move. She turned up one day with some guys who were more or less pimps - they were there to take a look at me because by that time I was a big girl. It was horrible and though this was reported, the social workers still insisted I see her, and around a year later they made me go to her flat in north London. It was awful - as soon as I stepped inside she said: 'Right, you're scrubbing the kitchen floor and the oven.' My half-brother and sister were living there and although they obviously had no quality of life it was all they knew.

I hated it and wanted to leave straight away but I couldn't, and that night was awful. My biological mother's boyfriend was drunk and he raped me. I was screaming and shouting, making all sorts of noise, and she came out of the bedroom and shouted at him. I was petrified but all she said in her broken English was, 'Stop shouting ... Polici, Polici!', before she hit me, went into the kitchen, came running back with a knife and held it to my neck. 'If you make all the noise,' she said, 'I'll cut your throat. The police are going to come.' So I shut up.

There was no bedroom for me so I lay on the sofa in the living room but the guy came looking for me again. I hid behind the sofa and then, when he left, ran to my brother's bedroom and spent the night in there - but he still kept doing what he was doing with his girlfriend.

It was a terrible, terrible experience yet nothing came of it. Even though the house parent at Ockingdon knew, she didn't report it. What's sad, is that I felt embarrassed: I was obviously very disturbed, was acting up at school and needed counselling, yet the stigma of seeing a child psychiatrist was hard to bear. It was a nightmare of a childhood and it was only because I loved sport so much that I got through it and met my true mother.

I actually met her during a school netball match. I'd been protesting a bit too loud and the referee said, 'Any more of that and you're off', and I turned and there was this woman named Mrs Whitbread. We didn't actually meet again until I took up javelin at the local athletics club. The coach was Margaret Whitbread, and when she arrived she recognised me and said, 'Oh no, not you! If you behave like you did on the netball court, there's no chance!'

I promised to behave myself and from there we went from strength to strength. By the time I was 14 I'd spent a lot of time with her, going to competitions and getting to know her family - her husband and two sons who would become my dad and brothers. I felt happy and relaxed and when my mother asked if I would become part of the family, I said: 'Of course!'

At times I was very lonely and sad, but I was determined to succeed and of course, with the way my javelin career went and my mother Margaret coaching me, it had to be fate. Bringing home a gold medal from the world championships was, well, like a fairytale.

A truly magnificent tale of how a woman can triumph after such a terrible start in life.

I learned to love myself like the person I've evolved into.
Fatima Whitbred