Ashia Hansen: Britain's greatest female jumper

Ashia Hansen with her Commonwealth Games gold

Triple jumper Ashia Hansen is one of the UK's leading female athletes.

She holds the Commonwealth Games gold medal, the World Indoor Championships title, and the World Indoor record.

In 1999, she added the Grand Prix final to her list of successes and is ranked as one of the world's greatest triple jumpers.

Born in 1971 in Evansville, Indiana, US, she was adopted at three-months-old by an English woman and her Ghanaian husband.

Ashia has a strong medal chance in Sydney

The family lived in Ghana for six years before settling in London.

Ashia switched from long jump to triple jump in 1992 at the age of 21 and has never looked back.

She is without doubt Britain's greatest ever female jumper having already set 20 British records.

Ashia's first international achievement of note was victory in the European Cup in Lille in 1995.

At the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 she narrowly missed out on a medal, and was placed fourth.

In 1997 Ashia won her first major medal, a silver at the World Indoor Championships in Paris.

Her progress during 1997 elevated her into the world's elite but a back injury during the 1997 World Championship prevented her from gaining a medal.

Bubbly personality

However, she recovered to win the annual IAAF Grand Prix final with a jump of 15.15 metres, the fifth best of all time.

The 1998 season started with her retaining her British Indoor Title and she gave her best performance to date, by jumping a World Indoor Record at the European Championships with a jump of 15.16m.

A heel injury prevented Ashia from competing for most of the outdoor season, but she rehabilitated sufficiently to win her second major title of the year at the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in September.

Ashia started the 1999 Indoor Season where she left her 1998 season, and dominated the World Indoor Championships in March where, with a jump of 15.12m, she claimed her first World Indoor title.

Away from track Ashia is renowned for her bubbly personality and cover-girl looks, which mean she is in demand from media and commercial worlds alike.

She has appeared in many health and fitness publications, national newspapers and magazines, and has been a guest on various television shows.

She is a member of the Nuff Respect stable which also represents athletes such as Linford Christie, Jamie Baulch and Tony Jarrett.

She runs for the Shaftesbury Barnet club in London but lives in Birmingham where she is coached by Aston Moore.