Christine Ohuruogo – 200m & 400m

If you would like further information please contact us on:
'Nuff' Respect
Email: agent@nuff-respect.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0) 20 8891 4145

 

As a former U17 and U19 England netball player, Christine participated in athletics from the age of 16 because of her love for running. She began to specialise in the 400m after agreeing to run her first race as no other athlete from Newham & Essex Beagles wanted to compete over such a distance. From then on Christine was regularly selected to run the 400m due to the impressive times she ran for her age group.

 

In 2001, Christine made her debut in athletics where she ran 25.0 for the 200m and 55.29 for the 400m, placing her 3rd in the junior international rankings. In 2002, a hamstring injury forced Christine to miss the season however she made a superb return in 2003 by performing a personal best (54.21) taking bronze place at the European 400m.

 

Christine was selected to compete for the GB team at the Athens Olympics in 2004, achieving a new personal best of 50.50 in the heats and narrowly missing out on a place in the final, finishing 4th in her semi final.

 

With Christine holding a strong belief that everyone should always make the most of their talent, she uses the fact that there is so much more out there to be achieved as her motivation to help continuously improve her level of conditioning and endurance speed to become the best in her event.

 

This was evident in 2005, when she opened her season by running the first leg of the winning 4x400 quartet at the European Cup and running 53.01 in her individual event. Improvements were seen throughout the year as she added the U23 AAA title to her list of achievements and took 2nd place at the senior AAA championships. Christine got her time over 400m down to 50.73 giving her silver at the U23 European Championships. On the Grand Prix circuit Christine continued to demonstrate her formidable talent finishing 4th in London and Sheffield and playing a vital role in securing bronze for the British relay team at the World Championships in Helsinki.

 

Christine’s improvement continued with an impressive victory at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. She convincingly beat the reigning World 400m champion, Tonique Williams, to win gold in another pb of 50.28 before adding a gold in the 4x400m to her impressive medal haul.

 

After this impressive start to her season, Christine unfortunately fell foul of a doping violation, whereby she omitted to inform UK Athletics of a change in her training location. Christine was banned from competing in the sport she loves for twelve months, but continued to train and came back fitter and stronger to win the World Championship in Osaka last August. Running 50.46 in her heat, a pb  of 50.16 in her semi and then 49.61 to win the gold medal, this time also put Christine third on the UK all time list. Later she ran the first leg on the bronze medal-winning UK team at 4x400m.

 

Following her successes Christine was selected as the British Athletics Writers' female athlete of the year and was included in the nominations for Sports Personality of the Year.

 

Christine has only competed once so far in 2008 as she continues to work hard in training towards the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer.

 

Christine is sponsored by Adidas. Off the track Christine gained a 2:1 in linguistics at University College of London and generally enjoys reading and listening to music to help her relax.

 

April 2008