Ashia Hansen

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Ashia Hansen, MBE (b. December 5, 1971, Evansville, Indiana) is a Ghanaian-British triple jumper.

Although born in the USA, Hansen was adopted at the age of 3 months by a Ghanaian father and a British mother and grew up in the UK after spending a few years in Ghana.

Hansen is a member of the Birchfield Harriers Athletics Club in Birmingham, along with other successful British athletes such as Denise Lewis, Kelly Sotherton, Mark Lewis-Francis and Katharine Merry.

Hansen has also represented Great Britain (and England) on the international stage at a senior level since 1994, competing at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, as well as the World and European Championships and the World and European Cups.

At the 1998 European Indoor Championships in Valencia, Spain, Hansen won the gold medal with a world record jump of 15.16m. She is also the UK record holder for the outdoor event.

Her white ex-boyfriend, Chris Cotter, made national headlines when he claimed that he had been stabbed by white thugs of the White Aryan Nazi Organisation claiming "We warned you not to mix with niggers". Hansen went into hiding after receiving hate mail, although it was later exposed that Cotter had organised the attack and hate mail himself, and he was later jailed. [1]

[edit] MBE

Hansen was awarded the MBE in 2003.

Hansen suffered a serious knee injury during the 2004 European Cup, requiring extensive surgery, however she did finally return to triple jumping and competed at the British Championships where she immediately climbed back to the top of the British rankings, however she decided not to be part of the team for the European athletics Championships that summer.^{[citation needed]}