Swimming
She learned to swim at the age of six and was training seriously two years later. She set a record by swimming for the British national team at the age of only eleven. She was so determined that she continued her training even after breaking both her wrists in a childhood accident. In 1976, still only thirteen, Davies was selected to represent Great Britain at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. Although her performance was not enough to get her in the medals, it did make her a household name. The next year she stepped up a gear to win two bronze medals in the 1977 European Championships. The following year, still just fifteen, she won gold medals at the Commonwealth Games in the 200 and 400 metre individual medleys. She also picked up a further silver and bronze medal.
By 1980 Davies was ready for a more serious Olympic challenge. She took the silver medal in the 400 m individual medley behind East German Petra Schneider, who later admitted that the victory was drug enhanced.
At the age of eighteen, Davies called time on the first stage of her swimming career in order to build her television profile and a career in modelling. In 1989, and training at Bracknell & Wokingham Swimming Club, she returned to the pool where she picked up two more medals at the 1990 Commonwealth Games. By the time she finally hung up her swimsuit for good in 1994, she had been a British champion on twenty occasions and had broken two hundred British swimming records and 5 World Masters records (eligible to those over 30).
In the 1993 New Year Honours, Davies was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) "for services to swimming".
Davies has been very vocal in the calls for a reallocation of medals and titles at the various games where East German athletes won using illegal, drug supported development techniques. Sports bodies have recognised the superior achievement of athletes like Sharron who shunned the use of performance enhancing substances but have fallen short of rewriting the medal tables.
Read more about this topic: Sharron Davies
Famous quotes containing the word swimming:
“Loosed betwixt eye and lid, the swimming beams
Of memory, blind school of cuttlefish,
Rise to the air, plunge to the cold streams....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Whenever parents become overly invested in a particular skill or accomplishment, a child’s fear of failure multiplies. This is why some children refuse to get into the pool for a swimming lesson, or turn their back on Daddy’s favorite sport.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“Mead had studied for the ministry, but had lost his faith and took great delight in blasphemy. Capt. Charles H. Frady, pioneer missionary, held a meeting here and brought Mead back into the fold. He then became so devout that, one Sunday, when he happened upon a swimming party, he shot at the people in the river, and threatened to kill anyone he again caught desecrating the Sabbath.”
—For the State of Nebraska, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)