Tessa Sanderson CBE

Tessa is a former British javelin thrower and heptathlete who competed in the javelin competition in the Olympics.

Tessa holds two Honorary Fellowship Degree one from South Bank University in London in 2004, and prior to this Wolverhampton Polytechnic. She also has an honorary Masters Degree from Birmingham University.

Tessa has competed in Six Olympic Games, which in itself is a record, which resulted in winning a gold medal in the javelin event in 1984. Tessa has won many other major medals including three times Commonwealth Gold and the last being a World Cup Gold in Cuba in 1990. In the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and competing in her 5th Olympics she finished an incredible 4th place in the final.

During her 26 years competing for Great Britain Tessa was voted Sports Personality of the Year and Athlete of the Year (3 times) by the Athletics Writers Association. In 1988 Tessa presented the Sports News for Sky Television. Her media career involves television presenting for BBC, ITV, Bloomberg, GMTV, where she covered the 1996 Olympics from Atlanta. Other media activities working with network radio sports stations.

Having now retired from competitive athletics in 1997, she still remains the only female athlete to win an Olympic gold throwing medal for Great Britain. Tessa continues to work with various Charities such as the Variety Club of Great Britain, Breast Cancer awareness, every year supports Black History Month and other Black and Ethnic initiatives and is patron to Jamaica Basic Schools a Charity for Underprivileged children in Jamaica.

Tessa does a variety of motivational talks and personal appearances all over the UK and can often be seen appearing on network television discussing various topics.

Tessa has been especially appointed to work with Newham Council to head up the Newham 2012 Sports Academy to find new talent and train under experienced coaches for the 2012 Olympic and paralympic Games.