Nicola Sanders

Nicola Clare Sanders (born 23 June 1982) is a former British track and field sprinter. She began her career as a 400 metres hurdles specialist before concentrating on the 400 metres from 2006 onwards.

Her outdoor 400 metres personal best is 49.65 seconds. She holds the British indoor record with 50.02 seconds, which ranks her as the fifth fastest woman of all-time indoors.

Sanders' senior international career ran from around 2006 until 2014, and peaked in 2007 when she won the 400 metres at the 2007 European Indoor Championships (breaking the British Indoor record), at the British Athletics Championships and then ran a personal outdoor best to win the silver medal at the 2007 World Championships behind compatriot Christine Ohuruogu. However her progress after 2007 was repeatedly hampered by injuries and after 2007 she did not feature again at the highest level of international individual competition, with all of her subsequent success being in the relay squads. In the 4 × 400 metres relay, she won a bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics (retroactively awarded in 2017), she won four World Championship relay bronzes in four consecutive championships from 2005 to 2011 and a relay gold medal at the 2012 World Indoor Championships, her final major international honour. After two years of struggling with injury, she announced her retirement from athletics in October 2014, aged 32.