A moment ago, she would have thought that leaping through the undergrowth like a champion hurdler was beyond her.

Gault, sought after by bobsledders for his speed in pushing off the four-man sleds, was a champion hurdler and sprinter in college.

When the champion hurdler, Beech Road, and Morley Street won at Cheltenham ten days ago it was hard to say which put up the better performance and which would be the stable's first choice for the Champion Hurdle should both be trained for the race.

Greg Foster, a former champion hurdler and a family friend, said he had spoken with Griffith Joyner's husband, Al Joyner, and with her sister-in-law, the track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee, and had been told that Griffith Joyner was believed to have suffered a heart seizure.

Kim Batten, retired female American champion hurdler.

Always a keen track-and-field man-he had been a champion hurdler at Michigan-he had kept himself in remarkably good shape.

Inside, they carried Grand National winners, champion hurdlers, all-conquering handicappers, splendid hunters: the aristocrats among jumpers.

"I was the national champion hurdler in high school," he said.

Sebastiane, the six-foot-two model who looks more like a champion hurdler than a clothes-horse, strides into the room in flat shoes.

Lyn Foreman (Lynette May Young) (born 5 March 1957) is a former champion hurdler who competed for Western Australia and Australia from 1979 to 1982.