Sharron Davies MBE
Sharron Davies is a successful swimmer from the United Kingdom.
Having won two gold medals at the Commonwealth Games and a silver at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow, Sharron has built a successful second career as television presenter and patron for charities for disabled children and fitness.
Sharron grew up in Plymouth and Plymstock. She learned to swim at age 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 a few months prior to her fourteenth birthday, she was selected to represent the UK 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 sixteen, 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 Sharron was ready for a more serious Olympic challenge. She took the silver medal in the 400m individual medley behind East German Petra Schneider.
At the age of 18, Sharron called time on the first stage of her swimming career in order to build her television profile and a career in modelling. In 1989 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.
In 2006, Sharron supported the British Olympic bid by profile raising and appearing as spokesperson on BBC´s Question Time where she made a strong case for bringing the games to London.
Sharron 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.