It'll be like any other day, but with a buzz
IN HER OWN WORDS; TESSA SANDERSON; who won the javelin gold medal at the 1984 Olympics, last week announced her intention to come out of retirement to chase qualification for Atlanta and become the first British woman to compete in six Olympic Games
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Your support makes all the difference.I'm turning 40 and I feel fantastic. A lot of people say: "Oh God, you're crazy wanting to go back in there and compete again," but I believe you are as you feel. I'm very healthy, physically and mentally, and thank God for that.
What I would love to do is tell every 40-year-old man and woman to get out there and take up the challenge. It's marvellous. I'm not 40 yet but, I'm telling you, I'm looking forward to it. I'll treat it like every other day, but with a bit of a buzz.
The main reason I became an athlete was because I wanted to travel. My family was very much a working-class family - my dad was a steel worker and my mum a hairdresser - so there really wasn't much money around.
As a child you are always hungry. You want to build things and carve out things for yourself. Then, the impulse was for travelling, but also setting personal goals for myself. I've always been a person who likes to take up challenges. My life has been challenges.
My immediate family life is very important to me. They are my backbone. My parents have emigrated back to Jamaica and I've just been seeing them. I wanted to feel the warmth again. I'm sure I'll have children of my own later on, but you can never predict these things. I think about it sometimes, but I don't worry about it.
We all go through life hoping that everything will be brilliant - that the person you carve out to be with will be the right person. There are many of us who make the mistake of choosing the wrong person, but you don't sit and drool over it. I'm happy being single and feel that life's not about sitting there and hoping you can get married. That becomes very boring and my life has never been like that.
I believe there is a God. Many times I have got down on my knees and said, "Hey, please God, let it be right." I am a Methodist. It's always been there and it's been a healing process. I went to church avidly every Sunday from the age of six right through to when I was 15 or 16. Now I haven't been for a while, but I still go. It's nice to feel there is a greater power, and I believe there is.
I'd like to be seen as someone who gives if I can give. If I can't, then give me the courage to say "No". It's not as if I even want to be seen as Mother Teresa either. Far from it. Like I say, if a person smiles, I'd like them to remember I smiled back.
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