Denise Lewis OBE is a retired Team GB track and field athlete, who specialised in the heptathlon. She won the gold medal in the heptathlon at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and bronze at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics.Lewis first competed at the heptathlon in 1989 and achieved a best of 5277, two years before finishing fifth at the European Juniors in Thessaloniki.
Within the space of five years she was named the Commonwealth Champion after winning gold in Victoria, Canada, defeating her opponent by just eight points. This was arguably the breakthrough moment in Lewis’ career.
Two years later, she was the only British woman to win a medal from athletics at the Olympic Games in Atlanta. Her performances went from strength-to-strength and led her to a dramatic Olympic victory in Sydney in 2000.
Lewis is one of the ‘golden girls’ of British athletics having been inducted into the UK Athletics Hall of Fame in 2011 and twice been runner-up in BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year Awards in 1998 and 2000.
Lewis was honoured as Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2000 New Year Honours. Since retiring from athletics, she plays an active role in key areas including television and media work and is now a regular athletics pundit for BBC Television, including during London 2012 and Rio 2016.