Whether you were the over-zealous swimming official who had tried to clear competitors from the pool before the allotted warm up time was up, or the international show jumping judge who had decided that a knock-down was a refusal, you really didn’t want to displease Sarah Parker in her prime. Not shy to express her interpretation of the rules, a staunch advocate for athletes and a tough competitor, Sarah was one of the unstoppable characters during a golden period for GB Modern Pentathlon in the 1970s and 1980s.
A pioneer of the women’s sport at a time when there was little formal recognition, Sarah was a key member of the all-conquering Great Britain women’s team that won three successive world titles in 1981, 1982 and 1983. She took individual silver behind her teammate, Wendy Norman in 1982, and bronze in 1983 as the best British finisher that year. A skilful rider and shot, she was difficult to beat in fencing, a trojan in the pool and yet finally had to contend with the 2000m cross country run that would so often determine whether she would medal, or not. To have your weakest discipline last is perhaps the toughest mental challenge for the multi-sport athlete. “Like dragging a piano around” she would say of her running style but never once backed away from the challenge.
Her pathway into the sport lay through her brother, Adrian Parker, who burst onto the scene in the early 1970s by virtue of his extraordinary running and swimming abilities. Sarah, a top age group swimmer had taken it upon herself to coach Adrian and then subsequently Jim Fox and Danny Nightingale as the team based much of their final preparation for the 1976 Olympic Games from the Parker home in Croydon. Their incredible breakthrough to win Olympic team Gold for Great Britain at the Montreal Games stunned the Modern Pentathlon community and had the British Press corps scrambling for their sporting encyclopaedias. The combined run/ swim engine of the British team took them from 8th to Gold after the cross country running and personal bests were swum by each athlete in the Olympic final, including Jim Fox at the age of 36. Mike Proudfoot, the Olympic Team leader in Montreal, attributed Sarah’s coaching to making a vital contribution to the team’s success.
The GB Olympic Gold medal winning team of Adrian Parker, Andy Archibald (reserve), Ron Bright (coach, Danny Nightingale, Jim Fox and Mike Proudfoot (Team Manager) with Sarah Parker in front at the 1976 Games in Montreal.
The following year, she determined that whatever the men could do, the women could do as well and along with a small number of fellow female competitors ensured that the first international world cup for women was held in San Antonio, Texas. The first British women’s team of Wendy Skipton, Kathy Tayler (who subsequently went on to star as a breakfast TV presenter) and Sarah caught the imagination of the Press given the popularity of the gun-toting female fixers ‘Charlie’s Angels’ in the popular US TV show of the time.
Wendy Skipworth, Kathy Tayler and Sarah Parker in ‘Charlie’s Angels’ mode for the 1977 women’s world cup in San Antonio, Texas, the first ever women’s international modern pentathlon championship.
Born in July 1956 and brought up in South London, Sarah, Adrian and her sister Jane along with parents Phil and Doreen, were a tight-knit family. Father Phil, a proud Yorkshiremen, had been a Grenadier Guards Bandsman before the second world war and went on to join his father in the family business ‘Phil Parker Ltd’ suppliers of musical brass instruments to some of the world’s greatest musicians, as it still does to this day.
As her own competitive powers diminished, Sarah turned her attention once more to helping others. Her coaching style was a charismatic mixture of ‘Yorkshire’ bluntness, relentless positivity and tremendous care and attention. She spotted a young army officer, Dominic Mahony, floundering in the pool at a domestic championship and coolly observed to him “I can see how you can take at least ten seconds off that 300m time”. True to her word, she not only wiped off the ten seconds through a careful mix of technique and threshold training, but helped to catapult him into the top six at the 1987 world championships, in Moulins France, and onto the bronze medal podium in the team competition there and at the 1988 Olympic Games alongside teammates Ric Phelps, Graham Brookhouse and reserve Peter Hart.
It is fitting that Sarah features in the happy group photos of Great Britain’s two Olympic medal winning men’s teams of 1976 and 1988. On both occasions, not part of the official party, she made her own way out to the Games, determined to see the fruits of her work and be involved in the drama.
Twelve years on: Sarah Parker front left with the bronze medal winning men’s team at the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.
In the photo from 1988, she is wearing a T-shirt bearing the words ‘Blow your own trumpet’ in tribute to her greatest supporters, her parents Phil and Doreen. An accomplished French horn player herself, Sarah and Phil were not averse to putting on impromptu after dinner performances to the many athletes, British and international that were welcomed into their home. She also built up a wealth of stories and anecdotes about her adventures as an athlete and coach that included evading the East German police for driving too fast on route to Berlin and Poland during the cold war, to the myriad of major and minor disagreements she had with authority figures in sport and beyond. Along with a healthy distain for pomposity, she showed a tremendous spirit for life, boundless energy and positivity and a cheerful wise cracking sense of humour. Indeed, the T-shirt stunt extended to an international championship at which the female hygiene brand Tampax were main sponsors. Egged on by Sarah, the British team appeared in T-shirts which stated simply; “GB…with no strings attached”.
After her sporting career, Sarah threw herself wholeheartedly into qualifying as a sports massage therapist and along with Mel Cash and Wrio Russell set up the London School of Sports Massage (LSSM) and worked with leading athletes across a number of sports. She also married husband Kevin Ashmore and went on to have three children Ben, Ellie and Michael with Ellie following in her mother’s footsteps as an LSSM practitioner.
In her latter years, despite her illness she maintained her habitually positive outlook and was active in support of the local church and community. Most who met her would marvel at her storytelling whilst remaining largely unaware of her own pioneering past.
With daughter, Ellie, graduate of the LSSM which Sarah co-founded in the 1990s
Sarah Ashmore, née Parker, pioneering modern pentathlete and coach, died of cancer on 14th September 2025 aged 69.
Obituary written by Martin Dawes and Dominic Mahony
