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Of Jamaican parentage, Fiona May was born in Great Britain, and she had
her first major success as a long jumper representing that country at
the 1987 European Junior Championships, where she easily won the gold
medal. Her next major competition was the 1988 World Junior
Championships in Sudbury. This was May's second appearance at the World
Juniors, as she had competed in the previous edition at Athens in 1986.
Fiona finished 8th in Athens, where despite entering the competition
with a personal best of 6.30m set two years earlier, May briefly thought
she had leapt 6.90m when her 6.09m jump was incorrectly displayed on
the scoreboard.
However, Fiona faced no such embarrassment or
disappointment at Sudbury, where she leapt a Championship record of
6.77m on her first jump. Anu Kaljurand (Soviet Umion) bettered this
leap by 1cm at her first attempt, to which Fiona responded with a
wind-assisted jump of 6.88m to clinch the gold medal. In the long jump
final at that year's Olympic Games in Seoul, on 29 September, May (see photo above)
fouled her first two jumps, and just snuck into the final eight to
qualify for an additional three jumps with a leap of 6.53m on her third
attempt. She improved this to 6.62m in the next round which ultimately
earned her 6th place. In 1990, May won the bronze medal at the
Commonwealth Games in February, and later that year she finished 7th at
the European Championships.
Despite this promising start to competition
in the senior ranks, her performances went into temporary decline from
that point. She failed to qualify for the finals at each of the 1991
and 1993 World Championships, as well as the 1992 Olympic Games, and it
would take a marriage, and representation for a newly-adopted country to
refocus her career. (Ron Casey)
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