Katharine Merry
British 400m runner
Katharine Merry (born 21 September 1974) is an English former sprinter. She achieved the bronze medal in the 400 metres at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and was the fastest woman in the world over 400 m in 2001, with her career best of 49.59 seconds. She also represented Great Britain at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and won the 200 metres at the 1993 European Junior Championships.
Career
Born in Dunchurch, Warwickshire, Merry had a career that spanned 20 years. A member of the Birchfield Harriers athletics club, at the age of 12 she topped the UK Under 13 rankings in seven different events. She was the fastest girl in the world aged 14 years, and started her international GB career aged just 13, staying on the junior team for a record six years, winning five Junior Championships and a total of six medals. She became a successful senior athlete with her Olympic medal in Sydney in the "Race of the Games", achieving bronze behind the Australian favourite, Cathy Freeman, in front of 112,000 people at Stadium Australia.
The following year she became World number One. She was coached by fellow Olympic medallist Linford Christie in his Cardiff-based training squad, which included fellow Olympic medallist Darren Campbell. She is also with Christie's sports agency, Nuff Respect.
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This entry incorporates text from “Katharine Merry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.