Two-time Olympian Lorraine Shaw is enjoying giving back to the sport that has given her so much over the years.

Now 57, the one-time top hammer thrower has competed all over the world and has a stack of medals to show for her efforts, including a Commonwealth Games gold.

But home is where the heart is for Gloucester-born Shaw and she remains committed to the city where she grew up and to Gloucester Athletic Club, the club where she started out on what became a very impressive journey.

The one-time St Peter’s School pupil has been president of Gloucester AC for seven or eight years and she coaches the club’s up-and-coming hammer and discus throwers three times a week.

That is obviously pretty special for the athletes under her tutelage and it means a lot to her too because she can still remember when she first took up athletics some 40 years or so ago.

“I didn’t do athletics at school, I didn’t really start until I was 16 when I left school,” she recalled. “It was my brother Amos Edwards who got me involved because he took me down to Gloucester, athletics opened my eyes.”

And it was soon apparent that she was a decent thrower.

“I took part in most of the disciplines,” she said, “although not the javelin, that hurt!

“I was more of a rotation person so I was best at the discus and the hammer.”

Initially she focused on the discus, although history shows she was actually much more suited to the hammer.

“I wasn’t good enough to represent Great Britain at the discus,” she admitted. “But I qualified to represent Ireland through my mum and I remember competing in the Irish Championships in Tullamore.”

That meeting was significant because it was the first time she picked up the hammer.

“I was about 25, it was quite late in life,” she said. “I didn’t take to it straight away but I’m quite a strong woman, I just swung it around my head a couple of times and then it was just one mad turn.  

“I landed it at 44 metres which was really good for Ireland and ranked me about fifth in the UK.”

Shaw’s issue back then was that it was only the men who competed in the hammer at the major games, so when she was selected by England to compete in the 1994 Commonwealth Games in Victoria in Canada it was in the discus.

She finished 10^th which was still very decent, of course, but four years later she did much better.

This time she was chosen in the hammer and she won a silver in Kuala Lumpur. A year later she represented Great Britain in the world championships in Sevilla, finishing 14^th.

She was approaching her peak around this time and she regards 2000 to 2002 as her very best years.

“I was ninth in the Olympics in Sydney in 2000,” she said. “Then in Edmonton I finished sixth in the world championships in 2001 and a year later I won gold at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester.”

She won another medal, bronze in the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, two years after she’d competed in her second Olympics, which were held in Athens.

Shaw, who also won seven domestic AAA hammer titles from 1994 to 2004, was clearly a major player and she said: “Winning gold at the Commonwealth Games was fantastic because it wasn’t expected, I was ranked fourth.

“I was the first woman to represent Great Britain in the hammer at the Olympics in 2000 and no other British woman hammer thrower has come as high as sixth in the world championships.”

For much of this time Shaw was competing for Sale Harriers but she never moved away from Gloucester and she said: “I was always a member of Gloucester Athletic Club, I always trained there, they were always my second claim club.”

Shaw officially retired in 2006, although she did still take part in the occasional competition.

“I put on my shoes once or twice,” she said. “I remember I competed in a BUCS event when I was a student at the University of Gloucestershire.”

It was an event she won, of course, and she remains around students today because she’s a sports teacher at Gloucestershire College.

“I love athletics, it’s changed my life, it made me a calmer person,” said Shaw. “I’ve experienced a lot in life, I’ve been all over the world.

“I’ve still got all my medals and I’ve still got all my GB kit. I’ve been a national coach for UK Athletics and a team manager for England.”

She’s proud of all those achievements and understandably so, and yet Gloucester AC remains very special to her.

“It’s an honour to be their club president,” she said. “I love the coaching side too, I’ve got a really nice young bunch, all they want to do is throw.

“All I do is rock up three times a week.”