Denise Lewis
Denise Lewis ( born August 27, 1972 in West Bromwich) is a former British heptathlete and Olympic champion.
Lewis learned as a child ballet and tap dancing. After she joined as a teenager a local athletics club and some disciplines had tried, she opted for the heptathlon. Your first competition, she contested in 1989 and achieved promising 5,277 points. Her first international competition was the 1991 Junior European Championships, where she was with 5,476 points in five.
Her international breakthrough came she experienced at the Commonwealth Games in 1994 in Victoria. There she won the gold medal with 6,325 points. The World Athletics Championships 1995 in Gothenburg brought back a slight step backwards in performance development. She reached the seventh place with 6,299 points. In its Olympic debut at the Games in Atlanta in 1996, she won the bronze medal and entered also in the long jump competition, but failed to qualify for the finals themselves.
The World Athletics Championships 1997 in Athens brought a great duel with the German Sabine Braun, which was from the first discipline in leadership and this leadership did not issue again. Denise Lewis won the silver medal. At the European Championships in 1998, it rose to the top podium and was best heptathlete in Europe.
At the World Athletics Championships in 1999 in Seville they got with the just eingebürgten Frenchwoman Eunice Barber a new competitor. It has developed into one of the most exciting heptathlon competitions in the history of the world championships. After the first day Barber led by a single point on Lewis. On the second day, the French managed to increase quite clear, and the reigning European Champion Lewis was again Vice World Champion.
At the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney she had after the first day as third placed a backlog of 51 points on the Belarusian Natallja Sasanowitsch. It was only at the penultimate discipline, the Javelin, Lewis took the lead, which she could defend in the final 800 meter race.
Even before the Sydney Olympic Games, she had problems with injuries. This should be reinforced in the years after her greatest triumph yet. The World Athletics Championships 2001 in Edmonton, they therefore had to cancel. 2002, the reason for the cancellation of the European Championships in Munich was a gratifying: she was the mother of a daughter.
In 2003, she returned Denise Lewis back on the athletics stage and brought it in Tallinn at her first competition since her Olympic victory of 2000 to 6,282 points. In the meantime, however, there was with Carolina Kluft of Sweden has a new star in the heptathlon. Kluft won the World Athletics Championships in Paris in 2003; Lewis was fifth.
At the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens Lewis wanted to defend her Olympic title. It was to be her last major competition. Injuries they still disabled, but it was still good in the Olympic competition and was ranked third in the meantime, before they had to stop the contest. The bronze medal won Kelly Sotherton, her successor in the British team.
Even after this disappointment, they do not yet resigned from active competitive sports. It was only in June 2005, ahead of the 2005 World Championships in Helsinki, she announced her resignation.
Denise Lewis is next to Paula Radcliffe and Kelly Holmes among the most popular track and field athletes in the UK. They were each in 1998 and 2000 ranked second in the election for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year. In the second season of the BBC dance show Strictly Come Dancing in 2004 she won the second place. Her daughter Rachel Emily Bragg is a professional volleyball player and is in the 2011/12 season at the German Bundesliga VT Aurubis Hamburg under contract.
Personal best
- 6,831 points - Commonwealth record in heptathlon
- 100m Hurdles - 13.13 s
- 200 m run - 24,10 s
- 800 m run - 2.12,20 min
- Long Jump - 6.69 m
- High Jump - 1.87 m
- Shot Put - 16,12 m
- Javelin - 51.13 m