Interviews with Black and Asian Sportswomen

Abstract

Maduaka was introduced to more serious sport at the age of thirteen by default, having shown little interest in it before then. In her words:

… I used to have an excuse every lesson as to why I couldn’t take part: headache, or time of the month, or whatever … I went to a school that didn’t have a playground [but] across the road in the Imperial War Museum was like a gravel football pitch. I just remember one day being over there sitting on the wall and reading a book while the rest of the class was running around on the gravel, and the teacher said to me: ‘get up and run, race against the girls’. I beat the lot of them in my school uniform and shoes, and everyone else was like kitted-out and she’s like: ‘I think we’ve got something here.’ She took me back to the office and said: ‘okay, let’s cut a deal. If you go to the track and do athletics, you don’t have to do canoeing or swimming, but only if you go down and train.’ I was like, ‘okay fine’, because it’s like I don’t do water, it’s the original black girl thing with the hair. I’m not getting into Surrey Docks for anybody! Canoe or no canoe, I’m not going swimming, I’m not going canoeing. So I went down to the track and spent near enough a year lying on the steeplechase barrier looking up at the sky. And I’d go into competitions and wonder why I hadn’t won, you know, or wonder why these other girls were so much quicker than me. I remember we were at the first English Schools Championship, and got knocked out in the first round. And that’s when I woke up.

The names of certain individuals and organisations connected with the interviewees have been changed to protect confidentiality.