When you think back to sporting heroes from your childhood – do any faces come to mind? I have those heroes too and I’m so lucky that in my profession, I’ve got to know and interview several.
One of those is Fatima Whitbread.
As a teenager, I saw this woman, looking very toned (unusual then), becoming the best in the world at her sport winning many medals and showing what it takes to be a World Champion.
What I did not appreciate was the journey she took to greatness – now I do and I’m honoured to share some of her story with you. You were an icon for many women of a certain age like me – did you realise that?
Well, it seems like many moons ago now since the day I was competing, and as you know, back in the 80s it was a completely different era. I suppose I was a bit of a trail blazer because women in sport were then frowned upon in a way. Things like women in sport shouldn’t have muscles and as I took part in a power event, throwing a javelin, I needed muscles, I needed strength.
And the other side of it was women shouldn’t be paid. So again, having become world champion and a world 
record holder even then I fought hard for equal pay. This generation has really benefited, I think, from that.
Where did it all begin for you?
What a lot of people might not know is that I actually came from the care system. I was abandoned as a baby – some would say left to die. Literally I was left by my birth mother alone in a property. A neighbour heard a baby crying and hadn’t seen anybody coming or going for a couple of days. She called the police, they broke the door down and rescued the baby – me.
What happened to you?
I was made a ward of court by Hackney Borough Council and I spent six months in hospital and then I was moved out to Hertfordshire. I spent my first five years in a children’s home with other children. Nobody ever told me that I had a mum or dad or brothers or sisters.
Most of the time we played in the front room, which faced the car park area. And I can always remember looking in the car park and if anybody came, I always used to say, “oh, is that my mummy coming to get me?”
I think this was the case of many of our children in the care system. They constantly find a struggle to process why they are in care.
What is your biggest learning from growing up in care?
As you get older, you have to learn it’s your responsibility to do the healing work from that trauma, from those experiences.
There’s no hierarchy where trauma is concerned. We all suffer from it and it’s very real. For me, it’s never that I’ve got over it. I mean, I’ve always said I left the care system, but the care system never left me.
Did you ever meet your birth family?
Yes and the memories are not good. When I was five years old, the house matron called to me and said, “Fatima, be down here at 9:00 tomorrow morning. Your mother’s coming to get you with your social worker and you’ll be moved to a new home where you’ll meet your half brother and sister.”
I thought, why am I going to be moved from the home that I know? These children are my family and this is my home, and I didn’t know I had a mummy or half brother or sister. I didn’t sleep much that night.
But at 9am I was sat there with my little paper bag to take with me. And I could see through the opaque glass window a pink cerise movement. And when the house matron opened the door, this large burly lady came in with black curly hair and she smiled and talked to the matron. I could see she had a gold tooth and a strong woof of perfume came through the door. She never once looked my way.
She never once talked to me all the journey down to the new home we were going to. She never made eye contact and I cried all the way. I remember when we pulled up on the drive, it was a much smaller children’s home. We had 25 kids in Hertfordshire, this one only had 14.
And as I went through the house into the back garden, I felt this little tug on my clothing. And I looked down and it was this little girl looking up to me. She said, oh, you must be my half sister.”
And I said, as kids do, “oh, yeah, I must be your half sister. Come and play on the climbing frame.”
As we went over to the climbing frame, I started to climb and I felt this thud across my chest and someone pulled me: “you look after your sister or I’ll cut your throat.”
And that was the biological mum. They were the first words that she ever said to me.
WHO DID INSPIRE YOU BACK THEN?
I was a little bit outspoken and often got into trouble. However we had an Auntie in the home called Auntie Rae. She was my bright shining star. She was all our kids bright shining star. She was an East End lady and we called her ‘the tickle monster’.
I used to hide under the bed covers and wait until she got me up in the morning. Until she got me up, I wouldn’t come out. She used to tickle us because we’d laugh and laugh and that sort of got us off to a good start to the day.
Auntie Rae, she was wonderful. One day I’d got it in my head that I was going to pick all these daffodils for her. I picked them from people’s gardens, which I shouldn’t have done and I knocked on her door and I hid them behind my back. And when she opened the door and I said “will you be my mummy?”
She said: “Oh Fat, come on, let’s go round the back. Let’s talk about this.”
I thought I was going to be in trouble. She sat me down and gave me a cup of tea and a biscuit and she said: “I can’t just be your mummy. I’ve got to be mum to all those children. But I’m not always there, and you are. Why don’t you be their mummy, while I’m not there?”
What lessons did Auntie Rae teach you?
She taught me two things – in giving you receive and it taught me to swivel the lens so that I didn’t look at myself as a victim. I was there to protect and be a protector of those children, call out any injustice and look after them. And I did.
One example was about around bed time. Back then some of the staff would make you do silly things that made no sense or were just cruel.
One was to make you stand at the end of your bed till they went to bed. For small children this mean standing until 11pm if they were in trouble for something like wetting the bed the night before (really common in care homes). I’d say to them ‘lay down and I’ll wake you up when they come up’ and I did. I’d teach them how to play pillow fights and jump up and down on the beds like trampolines.
And that’s what it’s about in the care system sector for a lot of our young kids, they need to swim or sink. And for me that was no different. I became very difficult at school because I wasn’t able to concentrate on my studies. A lot of young people in care struggle to concentrate because they’re too emotionally disturbed.
The stigmatisation back then for kids in the care system was terrible – one of those was getting free school meals as that marked us out as being different. Free school dinners was a no-no for me because the kids would always point their fingers at us and bully us. I’d fight back and defend my friends and if I got a smack for it, I didn’t care. I used to earn money to pay for my meals so that I didn’t stand out in that way.
I stood by my own beliefs and my own values then and even to this day. And I carried that through even when I was ‘in the jungle’ (I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here in 2011 and 2023).
When did you start to realise you were good at sport?
I was very determined to do something with my life, because at 11 years old, I remember watching Mary Peters at the Munich Olympics, and back then it was called the pentathlon, now the heptathlon.
I saw Mary win the gold medal, and that was when that seed was planted. Here’s something that I could do. I could be famous as a sportswoman in track and field, and that became my dream. I was always told, “you’ll end up on the streets, you’ll be a prostitute and you’ll be a junkie.” I was determined I would not – I was taking my own path.
I used to love throwing the cricket ball with the boys and beat them which I often did. Throwing the cricket ball with the girls wasn’t much fun because they weren’t very good at it. I used to end up doing things like climbing up trees with the boys, kicking a football round. I got invited to do some of the sports events and that’s where I found myself. Sport was my saviour and it earned me respect from my peers. I engaged with it more and more.
I often used to organize the school netball match training practices after school or at lunchtime. This taught me a lot about being responsible for showing up, time management and motivating my team.
I remember this particular netball match. It was a League cup match game, and it was for the championship. And I said to Auntie Rae, if we win, we’re going to get a medal and I’d like to give that to you, Auntie Rae.
We were playing this match and the whistle went because I was making a lot of noise. The umpire said: “young lady, keep that noise down, otherwise you’ll be off.” And I started motivating my team again. The whistle went again and the umpire said, “look, I’ve told you once before, if I’ve got to tell you again, you’ll be off. Keep the noise down.” The team captain said, “Fat. She’s really strict, just be careful.” I piped down a little bit and we went on to win.
At the end of that match, it was the end of the season, and the start of the athletic season. And I can remember saying to my friend Alma, let’s go to the local athletics club (Essex). When we got to the track stadium, I saw over in the distance a tall blonde guy. He looked really handsome, and he was throwing what looked like a spear. I said, “I think I’ll go over there.”
I walked over and went to pick up this ‘spear’ which was, of course, a javelin. I was told I had to wait for the coach to arrive. I’m sitting there with my arms folded, tapping my feet and with that, this Mini pulled in and this person walked across the field. I did a double take. It was the umpire from the netball match who had told me off for being too vocal – Mrs Whitbread.
How did that key relationship in your life develop?
As the weeks went by, she started saying that I had a bit of talent and she asked me to ask my parents to come down to talk about getting me my own javelin and boots and putting me on a competition programme. I’d always just nod my head and do nothing. Eventually one of the other coaches told her that I lived in a children’s home.
The following week, she came up with a pair of boots, and she said, “look, I’ve had a young lady who’s retired. These boots are probably two sizes too big for you. Here you have them. Stuff them with paper and they’ll be all right.” I was thrilled. Somebody, for the first time ever, had given me something and a javelin, too.
After a few months Mrs. Whitbread said, “how would you like to come and stay for a couple of weeks during the summer?”
I was a little bit nervous about that but I wanted to know what it was like to be living with a family. I went and had two weeks and I got on very well with her sons Greg and Kirk. They were only four and two, and as you can imagine, because I was brought up with children I was able to play. At the end of that two weeks, Greg said to his mum as we were leaving, “oh, mum do we have to take Fatima back to the shop?”
When we went into the children’s home, Mrs. Whitbread said to me: “we’ve all had a chat. How would you like it if you came to live with us?” I looked at her and said, “are you for real?” I was so worried about what my ‘family’ at the home would say especially Auntie Rae.
But she turned to me and she said “are you going to live with the Whitbreads? Oh, Fat I couldn’t be happier for you. You’ve always wanted a family of your own and this is a wonderful opportunity for you to have that.”
She put her arms around me, gave me a big hug. I kept in touch with her for the rest of her life. The fact was that through sport, I found the love of the Whitbreads. The rest is history.
What were your early sporting achievements?
For me that was the first achievement. My mum saw something in me from those early days. I went on to play county hockey as the youngest ever county player at 13, and I could have gone on international hockey.
At 16 I was invited by the Whiteman Cup to trial for golf and I was offered a career. But I didn’t want to leave the family because I felt that I’d only just joined, I didn’t want to leave my mum.
It wasn’t long after that I won a Winston Churchill scholarship as well, which enabled me to go to the United States to study at Los Angeles University. This was alongside athletes like Carl Lewis. Mum came with me and I was offered a scholarship to my university study and train. But again, I didn’t want to leave Mum.
I came back home and did it my way. I studied javelin and I trained three times a day. I used to sprint and do my distance running with other well known athletes. I used to do my weights in the back of a shed and you could just about move around with an Olympic bar. You had to be precise in your movements. And, yeah, I really did it hardcore way, but I loved every minute.
When did fame come your way?
When I won my first major championship title, I went in the qualifying round and broke the world record. And I can remember a lot of people saying to me at the time, you got the wrong day. Nobody’s ever gone back the next day and won the championships, but I did!
It was an amazing achievement and I went on to win Britain’s sole gold medal in 1987 at the World Championships and was voted Female Athlete of the Year, British Athlete of the Year, and World Athlete of the Year as well. I was also named BBC Sports Personality of the Year and got my MBE from the late Queen. 1987 was a big year for me. I also won silver and bronze medals at two Olympic Games in 1984 and 1988.
There was a sting in all of that for you though wasn’t there?
During this period The Sun newspaper ran a story involving my biological parent holding a picture of me in a frame saying ‘I want my blood daughter back’.
This was confusing and painful for me and my late husband, who was the organizer then for British athletics, Andy Norman, said to me “Look, you’re going to need to write your story. Because if you don’t, the press will do it and it won’t be very nice. They’ll make an ugly job of it.”
I was not prepared or ready for this however I did write my life story and frankly it broke me. I had a breakdown which I didn’t talk about at the time. But in 1988 it was the Olympics and I only just made it because during the winter months, having written the book and had the breakdown – I was struggling to get back to competing. I worked so hard and did win the silver medal yet it had taken a toll on me.
This ultimately ended my career because the following year I ruptured the rotator cuff muscle completely through trying to push through those barriers. And it was sort of evolution beat me as well because keyhole surgery wasn’t about at that time. It meant a serious operation and it took me 16 months before I could even lift my hand up above my head and swing it around.
When I got back, I was only throwing about 60 meters. I decided that this wasn’t to be. I couldn’t just go out and throw 60 meters. I made the decision to retire from competitive sport.
What did you do then?
I decided to go into sports marketing and I ran the most successful club in Europe and I looked after 34 top athletes. I was doing the marketing side and corporate hospitality and helping hospitality alongside track, field and televised events. I was around the world of sport yet not competing within it.
Retirement from competition was not something I decided. It was taken away from me and it was probably eight years too early. However ‘m grateful that I had the experience and I’m grateful for the championship wins and that I won eleven major medals and I was the best in the world in my sport. Not many people can say that.
Tell us about your campaign:
My campaign – Fatima’s Campaign UK – is about trying to rejuvenate the care system sector to create a national framework and bring together those who are already doing amazing work to improve the lives of children in care.
The system is too fragmented and that means many children can fall through the cracks and are not given the support to achieve their full and positive potential. I want to do something about that. I plan to run a summit in 2025 to begin to address this.
In my own life, it would only have taken a few different decisions for me to have gone down a negative or wrong path. The summit will share best practice, and ideas through collaboration and partnerships – and will ensure the voices of children in care are truly heard.
When I talk to children in care, children just like me – it’s not about the medals, it’s about the journey, it’s about the learning, the experience and having good people who believe in you.
This is my mission – to support children and young people in the care system sector to have better life chances, taking into account the trauma they’ve experienced.
Why do people need to listen to children in care?
They have been – and are being – let down. For example there’s no transition or real support for our care leavers, they are expected to suddenly live independently at 18 and, due to their upbringing, it’s far too young. 
There’s a difference between being supported with independent living and living independently – 33% of them end up homeless. 27% of those who are under the age of 21 in prison are from the care system. Many have mental health issues, myself included. Those the realities we need to face.
We’re the fifth biggest economy in the world and we are experiencing these problems. We need to be able to work
collaboratively to give these children life experiences, job opportunities, give them the chance to be able to stand on their feet independently and provide for themselves and one day, a family of their own, so they can truly break the cycle they were born into.
Interview by Feature writer Fiona Scott – Scott Media
