Melanie Marshall (born 12 January 1982) is a former British swimmer.
Born in Boston, Lincolnshire, brought up in Wrangle and currently residing in Loughborough with her two dogs, Missy and Jetson, she is 1.7 m (5′ 7″), 62 kg. A long lasting international career started at the 1995 European Youth Olympics in Bath, where she won four gold medals.
Melanie was ranked number one in the world in 2004 after breaking the British 200 m freestyle record to ensure selection to the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens.
At the 2008 Short Course World Championships in Manchester, she came third as part of the British women's 4×100 m freestyle relay team.
Melanie claimed six medals at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, the most decorated female athlete ever at one Games for England, in any sport and ended her swimming career at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
Melanie often cites her friends, the Upstairs Massive, and her family as part of the recipe for her success.
On 30 October 2008, Marshall announced her retirement from the sport. She is currently the head coach at City of Derby Swimming Club.
Famous quotes containing the word marshall:
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)