Silver Girl Trivia Quiz

Answer: Plymouth

Sharron was born in Plymouth in November 1962. She joined local swimming clubs and soon developed an aptitude for the sport. At the age of 11 she was invited to join the British national swimming team, making her at the time the youngest swimmer to do so.

Answer: Thirteen

Sharron was a member of the 1976 Great Britain Women's swimming team which took part in the 1976 Montreal Summer Olympic Games.

At the Montreal Games, there were 13 women's swimming events. East German swimmers won gold in eleven of these, silver in six, and bronze in one. By contrast, in the men's events they won a single bronze, which is odd, considering they would have shared similar training regimes and resources.

Sharron has since written how she and her colleagues knew at once that there was something suspicious about the East German swimmers, who were never allowed to mix with members of the other national teams and seemed almost like automatons in their behaviour. Much later, revelations about the state-sponsored doping regime confirmed what all the other athletes suspected - that the East German female swimmers had been given a cocktail of illegal performance-enhancing drugs.

Answer: Father

Sharron's father Terry Davies became her official coach when she was nine. He also coached several other successful British swimmers on an individual basis, although he was never invited to become a British national team coach, with all the prestige and additional opportunities this would have brought.

This is because he had spoken openly about the East German doping regime at a time when officialdom was pretending it didn't exist.

Answer: Jönköping, Sweden

The year after her Olympic debut, Sharron competed in the European Aquatics Championships, held in Jönköping, Sweden, where she won two bronze medals. Once again, the women's swimming was dominated by the East Germans, who won gold medals in 12 out of the 14 events. Sharron's individual bronze in the 400-metre individual medley was behind two East German swimmers, and the 4 x 100-metre freestyle relay in which she shared a team bronze was won by an East German quartet.

Even if you hadn't heard of Jönköping, hopefully the clue "northern" would have pointed you in the direction of Sweden.

Answer: Two gold, one silver, one bronze

In 1978, Sharron went to the Commonwealth Games in Edmonton, Alberta. Not being part of the Commonwealth of Nations, East Germany was not eligible to take part, and Sharron was at last able to compete on a level playing field against other "clean" athletes. Still aged only 15, she won individual gold medals in the 200- and 400-metre individual medleys.

She also won a team silver medal in the 4 x 100-metre freestyle relay, and a team bronze in the 4 × 100 metre medley relay.

Answer: 400-metre individual medley

The 400-metre individual medley was always one of Sharron's strongest events, and indeed she held the Commonwealth Record for 18 years, but that was attained in a competition from which East Germany was excluded. In the 1980 Moscow Olympics final she found herself up against three East German swimmers, plus two Poles, a Russian and a Bulgarian. The eventual winner, the East German Petra Schneider, was 10 seconds faster than Sharron, but following the reunification of Germany in the 1990s she confessed to having been given various drugs to improve her performance.

Shockingly, despite overwhelming evidence of doping, the International Olympic Committee refused to rescind the medals of the East German athletes; and numerous discredited East German medals remained in the record books.

Answer: Order of the British Empire (OBE)

Sharron initially retired from competitive swimming in 1980, following the Moscow Olympics. However, she made a successful comeback in 1989, and competed at the 1990 Commonwealth Games in New Zealand, where she won a team silver in the 4 × 200 metre freestyle relay and a team bronze in the 4 × 100 metre freestyle relay.

She then retired finally in 1992 and was awarded an OBE in the 1993 New Year Honours List.

Answer: Dancing on Ice

"Dancing On Ice" was launched in 2004 as ITV's answer to the BBC's successful celebrity dance competition "Strictly Come Dancing", and as the name suggests it required the hapless celebrities not only to learn to dance, but to do it wearing ice skates. Expert input was provided by British ice-dancing duo Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, who had won Olympic gold in 1984 with their sensational dance to Ravel's "Bolero". Sharron took place in the fifth series and lasted for seven rounds before being eliminated.

Her partner was Pavel Aubrecht.

Answer: Participation of transgender "women" in women's sporting events

From the mid-2010s, many sporting organisations made the decision to allow so-called "transgender women" to compete in sporting events in the same category as natural-born women. This caused some controversy, not least because such individuals retained many aspects of male biology and physicality which gave them an unnatural advantage over women, as well as causing significant physical danger in contact sports such as rugby. Women forced to compete against transwomen were threatened with being banned from their sport if they complained, so it was left to retired sportswomen such as Sharron Davies and tennis champion Martina Navratilova to speak up on their behalf, despite receiving considerable abuse for doing so.

It is significant that some organisations, including World Athletics and World Aquatics, having looked at the overwhelming scientific evidence, have amended their rules to state that males who have gone through puberty must compete in male categories, even if they identify as women.

Answer: Unfair Play

"Unfair Play" is subtitled "The Battle for Women's Sport" and looks at various issues that have threatened women's sports in the past and continue to do so today. These include the state-sanctioned doping regimes of East Germany in the 1970s and 80s, as well as Russia in the twenty-first century. More recently, Sharron argues that allowing trans women, who were born men, to compete against biological women is in danger of destroying the integrity of women's sports all over again.

The other options are also books which look at the issues around women's rights and transgender activism. "Material Girls" is a 2021 book by Kathleen Stock, "Time To Think" (2023) is by Hannah Barnes and "Trans" (2021) is by Helen Joyce.