Christine OHURUOGU

Christine Ohuruogu was born to Nigerian parents and raised just a kilometre away from the site of the 2012 Olympic stadium. She split her sporting priorities between netball, where she was a member of the England junior team, and athletics, until she won a bronze medal at the 2003 European Junior Championships and decided to concentrate fully on the track. This move proved extremely beneficial and she duly won a place on the Olympic team after running a personal best to the win the British trials. She narrowly missed qualifying for the final of the 400 at both the Athens Olympics and the 2005 World Championships but was rewarded with her first major medal, a bronze in the 4×400 relay, at the latter championships. Ohuruogu started 2006 in sensational fashion as she defeated reigning World and Olympic champion Tonique Williams-Darling for the Commonwealth Games gold medal but ended ignominiously as she began a twelve-month ban for missing three out-of-competition doping tests.

The ban ended in early August 2007 and she still had time to run a qualifying time for the 2007 World Championships. At those championships she impressively moved through the rounds and then produced a wholely unexpected performance to run past fading opponents and cross the line in first place, having broken 50 seconds for the first time ever. Though the field for the final of the Beijing Olympic 400 was stronger than the year before, the race developed as a carbon copy of the 2007 world final as once more Ohurougu kept her form as others faltered and powered home to become her nation’s first Olympic champion in the event. Since Beijing her form has dipped and, although she was a finalist at the 2009 World Championships, her momentum has been checked by a series of niggling injuries. She made the British team for the 2011 Worlds but, in a rare occurrence for a 400 metre runner, was disqualified for a false start. However, she returned to form to take the silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012, and then won her second 400m world title in 2013 before being part of the England team that won the bronze medal at the Commonweath Games in 2014. Ohuruogu won another relay bronze at Rio 2016 as she became only the second British track and field athlete after Steve Backley to win medals at three consecutive Olympics.