Sharron Davies: I Was an Olympic Swimmer, I Want Trans Women Banned From all Female Sports
Olympics. I was the only non-Communist in the swimming final. Everyone else was Russian, Polish or East German. So everybody was cheering like crazy until they got to my lane and then they all went quiet—apart from my dad, who was cheering as loudly as he possibly could.
I was just 17 years old.There was an awful lot of pressure. Once I became double Commonwealth Games champion in '78 there was a lot of expectation on my shoulders to go to the Olympic Games and to win medals.
You don't want to let anyone down.My family had made huge sacrifices. We were a very normal working-class family from Plymouth, England, so they went without washing machines and summer holidays and all sorts of things so that money could be spent on me.I trained for six hours a day, six days a week, before and after school.
It's full time; your whole life revolves around it. But still I knew I had no chance at a Gold medal. I was competing against Petra Schneider, one of the swimmers from what was then East Germany.
