Left for dead as an infant, raised in care and abused as a child, Whitbread became an exceptional athlete. She explains what it takes to be the world’s best javelin thrower, survive a breakdown and bounce back from financial ruin
n the latest of the many lives of Fatima Whitbread, the former champion javelin thrower has become a formidable reality TV star – and it suits her. She is surely one good show away from “beloved” status, which might prove to be the I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! spin-off in which she is soon to star, alongside a select group of other former participants in the ITV show.
It was a life of deprivation, physical and emotional. There wasn’t enough food and they had few clothes. The children played in a cold garage with a concrete floor. Love and affection were scant. She was abandoned again and again. Occasionally, her biological mother would arrive to take her half-siblings home for a visit, but not Whitbread.
She worries about the cost of living crisis, inequality and poverty: “The kids are the ones that are getting the damage done.” Just two years later, in 1979, Whitbread was crowned European junior champion – becoming the first British woman to hold the title. At less than 1.65 metres tall, she wasn’t built like a champion javelin thrower, but what she lacked in reach she made up for in determination: “I had little room to manoeuvre where making mistakes was concerned, so I had to work exceptionally hard at analysing everybody’s techniques and working out the best for me.
Whitbread was aware of the comments in the media about her muscular physique. Did she care about that? “It’s tools for the job,” she says of her body. Had she been taller, maybe her muscles wouldn’t have been so noticeable, but she was “stubby”, she says, laughing. “But I didn’t care, because I loved what I did and that’s what it took for me to succeed. I didn’t take notice; I was just proud of my work ethos. But sometimes they could be unkind.
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