Steve Backley
Born on 12th of February 1969
(full name and title: Stephen James Backley, OBE)
Born: February 12, 1969
Steve Backley is a highly successful British javelin thrower. Now retired from the sport, he is the only British track and field athlete to have won medals at three consecutive Olympic Games. Unfortunately, the gold medals eluded him at World and Olympic level but he was able to bring home gold at the European Championships on four consecutive occasions between 1990 and 2002.
In addition to European gold, Backley has three Commonwealth gold medals to his name. He also held three world records in the men's javelin event and in total won 13 major championship medals. His long running battles against Jan Zelezny were always a friendly rivalry and it was Zelezny who was often to deny him in the World and Olympic competitions. Steve has a massive personal best of 91.46 metres in the javelin event; a distance he recorded at North Shore City in New Zealand back in 1992.
Backley has a background in Sports Psychology and always strove for improvement. He now does various work speaking publicly and mentoring others to achieve success in their own fields. He also coaches young athletes as part of the Norwich Union and UK Athletics programme.
He won his first major title in 1987 at the European Junior Championships and retired in 2004 after narrowly missing out on a medal in his fourth consecutive Olympic Games at Athens where he finished fourth.
Since then he has appeared on Dancing on Ice in the 2008 show but admits to struggling due to his hip replacement. Despite this he has been described as a 'sex-symbol' following his appearances on the show.
Backley was awarded the MBE in the New Years Honours list of 1995 and this was later upgraded to OBE in 2003.
Links:
http://www.stevebackley.com/ Official Pages...
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