Greater Manchester Sports & Olympic Champions

Darren Campbell

Olympic Running Champion

(b. 1975)
Darren Campbell, gold-medallist at the 1998 Budapest European Championships and silver-medallist at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, has been a member of the Sale Harriers Running Club since the age of 18, when he made his debut as a member of the 100 metres relay team at the 1993 Stuttgart World Championships. He had spent much of that year training in Australia with the likes of Linford Christie and Colin Jackson.
He is also a keen footballer and played for two successful seasons with Newport and at Weymouth Football Clubs, before returning to athletics. During the 1991 and 1992 he had developed into the most successful junior British athlete, with four Gold and two Silver Medals won at International Championships to his name.
After several very successful seasons, his performance deteriorated for a time with disappointing performances at the Olympic Trials in Birmingham in 1996 and an unfortunate episode in Atlanta, Georgia, where he was prevented from finishing the relay race when a team member dropped the baton before it reached him.
The 1997 season saw victories in the 100 and 200 metres at the Cardiff Games as well as a string of European successes including a personal best over 200 metres. He went on to collect a Bronze Medal at the World Championships in Athens in the 4 x 100 metres relay event.
At the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton, Canada, he went on to take the Gold medal, though later, when he pulled a hamstring, he was forced to observe the rest of the season from the sidelines.
Meantime he had joined the Eurosport Television Team covering the World Athletics Championships and made guest appearances on Breakfast TV and Radio.
The 2002 Commonwealth Games saw Darren still recovering from injuries and not at peak fitness - nevertheless, native Mancunians witnessed the delivery of his impressive run in the 200 metres Final to win a Bronze medal for England. On the last night of the Manchester Games, Darren and his team-mates were awarded the Gold Medal for winning the relay race, ahead of the Jamaican team, after a photo finish decision.
As the British and European Champion, Darren is regularly featured in the media and has made numerous appearances on TV as well as appearances on London's fashion catwalks.

Diane Modahl

Commonwealth Games 800 Metres Gold Medallist

(b. 1966)
Manchester Born and resident Diane Modahl is the three times 800 metres Commonwealth Games medal winner and Gold Medallist of the 1990 championships in Aukland, New Zealand, where she broke the existing 800 metres world record. She is, to date, six-times British 800 metres champion and has attended four Olympic Games.
Diane maintains that the turning point of her sporting career came early when she was just eleven years of age, in her first year at secondary school, when a talent-spotter from Sale Harriers Running Club saw her during a school physical education class and afterwards invited her to join the club. She went on to become one of Sale harrier's leading athletes and medal winners.
But her otherwise illustrious career was to be hampered by a particularly unpleasant drugs allegation - in 1994 she was sent home, on the face of it in disgrace, from the Commonwealth Games, accused of taking the hormone Testosterone. Diane vehemently denied the charge and spent the following two years in a state of what she described as "a living hell", appealing against the charge - she was eventually totally vindicated and cleared of the charge by the British Athletic Federation and her professional status was reinstated. The International Amateur Athletic Federation admitted that the laboratory which carried out the test had made "fundamental mistakes".
During this difficult time, and as a sign of her strength and resilience, she completed a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in Media and Business Management at Manchester University.
In the 1998 Commonwealth Games she won the bronze medal, achieving one of the fastest times in the world. She is still the British record holder for the 600 metres, and currently works as a sports presenter on BBC Greater Manchester Radio, writes a column in "The People" newspaper, and is sports editor and journalist for the monthly national magazine "Family Active". She played a major role in the television reporting and presentation of the XVII Commonwealth Games in her native City of Manchester.

Sunny Lowry MBE

English Channel Swimmer

(1911-2008)
Born in Longsight, Manchester in 1911, Sunny Lowry was the first English woman to swim the English Channel. She had attended Grangethorpe Road School and later the Manchester High School for Girls, and it had been her ambition to swim the channel since she was a very young girl. Sunny began her swimming career at the Victoria Baths where she spent many hours in the pool, participating in swimming competitions and developing her diving skills. She went on to become a member of the Victoria Ladies Swimming Club.
Later, Sunny and her sister went to Levenshulme Baths where they trained for swimming competitions on Lake Windermere in the Lake District where they were soon winning major prizes. Sunny began to swim long distances at sea and could soon swim from their holiday home in Rhos-on-Sea to Colwyn Bay and back. With the complete backing of her father, she made her first attempt at a Channel crossing, fortified with a protein rich diet of 8 eggs a day and 4 hours daily training supervised by coach Jed Woolfe. Her first abortive attempt ended just short of the French coast. When strong winds and currents forced the attempt to be called off.
Sunny's third, (and successful), Channel attempt was made on the night of 28th August 1933 when, at the age of 22, she set off from from Cap Gris Nez near Calais to swim to St Margaret's near Folkestone. She successfully completed her swim in 15 hours 41 minutes - the first ever English woman ever to swim the Channel.
In July 2003, at the age of 92, she was inducted into the International Marathon Swimming Association's Hall of Fame and in 2001, at the age of 94, she was awarded an MBE in the New Year's Honours Lists for services to swimming in the North-West. . The two-piece heavy woollen swimming costume which she wore during her record swim is now on show at the Cross Channel Museum in Dover. Sunny Lowry died at the age of 97 on 21 February 2008 at Warrington Hospital.

William Web Ellis

'Inventor' of Rugby Football

(1806-1872)
William Webb Ellis was born on the 24 November 1806 in Salford. After the death of his father, his mother moved with her two sons to live in Rugby in Warwickshire in order to get them a good education at the celebrated Rugby School. Ellis attended the school from 1816 to 1825, and was successful in both academic studies and sports.
Later, he won an exhibition to Brasenose College, Oxford, which he attended from 1825-1828, and where he gained a Cricket Blue. In adult life he became chaplain of St George's Chapel in Albermale.
Ellis's notoriety comes from an event at Rugby School during a football training session in 1823, when, as a 16 year old schoolboy, he caught the round ball and instead of standing still, he ran with it, and that, so the story goes, is how the game of Rugby Football began. In fact, some authorities have it that he might actually have been demonstrating the ancient Irish game of 'caid', which was similar to rugby, and may have been introduced to William by his father who had been stationed as a soldier in Ireland. Many schools at that time played a game similar to rugby and football, which had few rules, many played by their own rules, and touching or holding the ball was not uncommon - what Ellis did differently was that he actually ran with the ball and placed it in the net.
An official split between what became Soccer Football and what was to become Rugby Football took place in 1863 when the Football Association was formed. Later, in 1871, representatives from rugby clubs across the country met to form the Rugby Football Union and draw up their own common code of laws.
A statue of Ellis as a young boy carrying a football can be found in the grounds of Rugby School. William Web Ellis died on 24 January 1872 in Mentone, France and is buried in the cemetery there.

John Amaechi

Manchester & USA Basketball Player

(b.1970)
John Amaechi was actually born in Boston, Massachusetts in the USA on 26th November 1970, but he and his two sisters were brought up by their mother in Manchester. John attended Stockport Grammar School as a boy, where he soon showed himself to be an up and coming rugby player. However, by the age of 16 his main interest had changed to basketball and, under coach Joe Forber, he developed his skills and realised an ambition was to play professional basketball. To this end, he moved to the States, to live in Toledo, Ohio, and within two years he had been recruited by an American High School and subsequently by Penn State College to play in the top USA Basketball Conference.
Next, he was recruited by Cleveland Cavaliers in the National Basketball Association, where he became the first English player ever to start a game in the NBA. His game has taken him to Italy, Spain, France and Greece to play in top leagues in all these countries. He also played for the Utah Jazz team, spent two years with Orlando Magic, with the Houston Rockets and at the New York Knicks.
On a completely different front, Amaechi has been actively involved in the Prevent Child Abuse campaign in America since 1997, as well work for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in the UK.
Recently, he has returned back to England - first, to play for the Manchester Magic Basketball Team and secondly, to oversee the construction of the Amaechi Basketball Centre (ABC) in Manchester, a £2 million facility of which he is the sole benefactor.
Since the late 1990s, Amaechi has run the most successful Basketball Camps in both the United States and England.

See also: Amaechi Basketball Centre