Brenda Howden wears her eminence and her gold medal lightly.
“I don’t blow my own trumpet. A lot of children here do not know I have won an Olympic gold medal,” she smiles.
Howden is a picture of fitness and understatement, on this cool winter’s afternoon at Auckland Park Preparatory School in Johannesburg, where she is headmistress. As well as her eminence, she also wears lightly her blue 1980 Olympics jacket. It fits like a glove and you can easily imagine she could still tear down the wing, hockey stick in hand.
It is ironic that, 32 years ago, Howden, then known as Brenda Phillips, was considered too weak to make the grade at the Olympics. She was one of the Bulawayo contingent, which included striker Pat McKillop, goalkeeper Sarah English and Helen Volk.
Howden, then 22, was teaching at her old school in Bulawayo, Townsend High School, when the call to Moscow came. The excitement was tempered by doubt over whether she was strong enough.
“For the next six weeks I had to get up at 4am and got for weightlifting in the gym. Then I had to go to school to teach and during break time I would practise goal shooting. Then, after school, I would go over the road to the nearby race track and run until 9pm at night,” she says.
Howden made it to Moscow and was surprised by what she found. The streets were drab, the shop windows were empty and there were queues for food.
“It seemed that everything was in black, white or grey. We could go into our cafeteria at the Olympic village and order whatever we wanted, but outside people were suffering,” she says.
Security was tight at the Games, but for the team, who were all very young, it was a golden excursion, as well as a sporting event. Howden kept a scrapbook that tells the story of the entire trip; from the good luck cards before they went; to a program from the ballet; pictures of the Kremlin and even a photograph of Britain’s Steve Ovett on his victory lap, after winning his only Olympic gold medal in the 800 meters.
“We even bunked one night to go and see the Moscow underground. It is beautiful and the stations had chandeliers in them,”she says.
There was a huge crowd when the team touched down in Harare. Drum majorettes were on the tarmac and people packed the airport. In the crowd was 11-year-old Lindsey Carlisle on her father’s shoulders.
“The plane was late, but that didn’t dampen our enthusiasm. When they came out we were all looking for the gold medals around their necks,” says Carlisle.
“The arrivals hall was full. I remember seeing the captain Ann Grant and we moved closer so I could touch her medal and I knew then what I wanted to do with my life. I turned to my dad and said I want one of those one day. He said I had better start working towards it.”
True to her word, Carlisle, who grew up in Zimbabwe, but was born in Johannesburg, became captain of the South African hockey team. She went to two Olympics, Sydney and Athens, but brought back no medals and could have been forgiven for being disappointed.
“I never really thought of it that way. Just going to the Olympics and being regarded as one of the best athletes in the world is good enough for me.”
Howden flew home to Bulawayo where schoolchildren had been bussed in from miles around to clap her through arrivals. In the months that followed, she replied to fan mail and autograph hunters from around the world and attended numerous functions and speaking engagements. In 1984, she moved from Bulawayo to South Africa, where she is married with two sons, and where she trains youngsters in hockey.
“I would like to go back to Moscow one day, just to see what it looks like. I am told it has changed,” she says.
“I have no regrets. The Olympics stood me in good stead and it taught me how to fight to the top and never give up.”
Golden words from a golden girl.

The Quiet Olympian

Heavyweight boxers David Haye and Dereck Chisora have been trying to get at each other for weeks now—on July 14, they will get their chance at West Ham’s Upton Park football ground in London. A crowd of 40,000 is expected, the biggest in Britain since Ricky Hatton beat Juan Lazcano in May 2008.
Both fighters will be unlicensed and angry; neither will earn any boxing ranking points from the fight—merely the grim satisfaction of winning what promises to resemble a street brawl. The British Board of Boxing Control has banned Chisora from fighting; Haye’s license has expired.
The first round of this street brawl was fought out on television, before a bewildered boxing world, at a press conference following Chisora’s loss to Vitali Klitschko for the World Boxing Council heavyweight title, in February at the Olympiahalle in Munich, Germany.
Was it real or staged? Many wondered. What is clear is that the two British boxers don’t like each other and it all boiled over in Munich.
It was the stuff the tabloids dream of. The Klitschkos’ manager, Bernd Boente, announced that no more British boxers would be given the right to challenge the world heavyweight champions, Vitali and Wladimir. This was a reaction to Chisora’s unbecoming behavior—to say the
least—before the fight.
First, Chisora slapped Vitali at the weigh-in. Then he spat on his younger brother, Wladimir, just before the fight.
After the fight it got worse. Haye, who had lost to Wladimir a few months earlier, was in the crowd of journalists at the post-fight conference. He objected to Boente’s statement about British boxers and demanded a rematch.
Sensing that Haye was stealing the show, Chisora responded by charging off the stage to attack Haye, verbally and physically. A brawl ensued amid the chaos of tumbling journalists, cameras and flying fists; Haye swung a camera tripod at Chisora. In the confusion, Chisora claimed he was glassed and said that he would either shoot Haye or hunt him down, or both. The German authorities detained 28-year-old Chisora and the British Board of Boxing Control banned him.
Chisora’s father, Paul, a contracts manager at a fireplace manufacturing company in Harare, was quoted in the Zimbabwean newspapers as saying: “If it was me, I could have kept my cool. He is still growing up and did not have anyone older who could restrain him.”
The two camps fixed the fight for July and persuaded the boxing federation of the small European nation of Luxembourg to sanction it because no one else would. This will be the first time a fight will be held in Britain, licensed by a foreign federation. The disgusted Luxembourg government withdrew its subsidies from the federation in protest.
It is a big story swirling around a young man from Zimbabwe. Chisora was born and bred in Harare and left for Britain to join his mother in 1999. He fights out of Finchley—Margaret Thatcher’s old constituency—and is a naturalized Briton with an accent more cockney than Shona.
Chisora fought 20 times as an amateur, before turning professional in 2007. Before he was banned, he was ranked 13th in the world heavyweight division, notching up 15 wins in 18 fights, with nine knock-outs. His winning streak of eight fights ended with the boxing authorities suspending Chisora for four months for biting journeyman boxer Paul Butlin in a heavyweight clash at the York Hall in Bethnal Green, London. As a result, he missed a fight for the British Heavyweight title against Danny Williams in 2009. He would defeat Williams a year later to become the British champion.
What irked Chisora was that Haye was given the opportunity to challenge for the world title first. Haye went on to lose to Wladimir in a poor showing after declaring that he would knock out both the Klitschko brothers in one night. Haye later claimed that he went into the fight with a broken toe.
By the way, Chisora went to Churchill Boys High School in
Harare—its mascot is a bulldog. Its spirit follows him still.

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The Quiet Olympian

Grimy Grudge Match