FROM the pitch to the pool, women are killing it across the sporting spectrum.
To mark International Women’s Day, we celebrate 20 of our most inspirational sheroes from the past 20 years.
There aren’t many people who can claim to have won two Olympic golds while still a teenager, but Rebecca is one of them.
At 19, she competed in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and nabbed gold medals in 400m and 800m freestyle, becoming the first British swimmer in 100 years to win more than one gold medal at a Games.
After retiring aged 23, she established SwimStars to help kids (and their parents) feel confident in the water. She’s also spoken out about everything from body confidence to her grief over miscarrying daughter Harper at 20 weeks last year.
Jess earned gold-medal glory in the heptathlon at London 2012, and boy, did she deserve it, revealing she’d put in 10,000 hours of training.
The three-time heptathlon world champ took a break in 2014 to have son Reggie with husband Andy Hill, before another bid at the 2015 World Championships in Beijing where she took gold, followed by silver at Rio in 2016.
Since retiring, she’s been made a Dame and launched Jennis, a hormonal health app.
Hailing from a housing estate in east London, Alex first fell in love with the Beautiful Game by kicking a ball about in a local football cage, before being scouted by Arsenal when she was just eight.
“I didn’t know then that there were women’s football teams,” she has said. She started out as a striker for the first team, before swapping to full-back and going on to win 21 major trophies.
With so many incredible moments from her silverware-strewn club career, one of the most unforgettable has got to be her winning goal in the 2007 UEFA Women’s Cup final against Sweden’s Umeå, helping Arsenal to become the first British club to win the tournament, which was part of the women’s historic quadruple season that year.
Alex was also a key player for the Lionesses, with a whopping 140 appearances across four Euros, three World Cups and at the London 2012 Olympics.
She retired in 2017, was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2019, and has since become a respected pundit and presenter on Sky Sports and the BBC.
She was the first female host in the 46-year history of Football Focus when she joined in 2021, and has since used her platform to speak out about domestic violence and LGBTQ+ rights.
Olympics fever took over London in 2012, and Nicola’s star shone when she became the first woman to win gold in Olympic boxing.
She declared: “Women should be able to do any sport they choose.”
At Rio 2016, she retained her flyweight title.
Since retiring in 2019, she’s become a mum to Taylor, 20 months, with beauty blogger partner Ella Baig, 25, and set her sights on Hollywood.
After starting out as a Team GB kit-bag carrier at London 2012, it wasn’t long before Dina was centre podium herself.
In 2015, she became the first British woman to break the 11-second barrier for the 100m at the Anniversary Games in London, and she broke the British 200m and 4x100m records at the World Championships in Beijing.
Her personal best of 10.83 seconds makes her the fastest British woman in history, so Paris 2024 had better watch out!
According to an interview with Vogue, if she takes home the gold, she’s going to treat herself to a new handbag and an Olympic rings tattoo.
When it emerged that Nike wasn’t planning to release a replica of Mary Earps’ goalkeeper shirt for the Women’s World Cup last year, there was outrage.
A petition quickly amassed more than 152,000 signatures, forcing the sportswear giant into an embarrassing U-turn to produce the shirt, which subsequently sold out.
Mary “Queen of Stops” went on to become England’s standout star of the tournament, winning the coveted Golden Glove, as the team went to the final.
She also nabbed the Best FIFA Women’s Goalkeeper award for a second year, an MBE in the New Year’s honours list, and was named the 2023 BBC Sports Personality of the Year.
And to think that she almost stepped away from football a few years ago, worrying she wasn’t quite good enough after being dropped by then-manager Phil Neville.
Thankfully, his replacement Sarina Wiegman thought differently, and Mary’s life was changed forever.
Starting tennis training at seven, Heather became the first Brit to take the US Open girls’ singles title in 2009, aged 17.
Three years later, she stormed the Japan Open as the first British woman to win a WTA singles title since Sara Gomer in 1988. She then won the Wimbledon mixed-doubles title in 2016 alongside Henri Kontinen.
The previous year, when beaten in the Australian Open, Heather put it down to “girl problems”.
Since then, she’s smashed the taboo surrounding periods in sport, and finally we’re seeing a shift, with Wimbledon ending its outdated all-white underwear rule.
Her name has become synonymous with the sports scene ever since she raced to victory in the heptathlon at the Sydney Olympics in 2000.
It was the moment when, according to Denise, “everything changed.”
Even with her leg bandaged up due to an Achilles tendon injury, the then 28 year old took the gold medal.
Off the track and field, she was named runner-up in the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year in 1998 and 2000, and was awarded an OBE in the 2000 New Year Honours.
After hanging up her spikes in 2005, the mum of four became a regular on the pundit scene and has long been heralded as inspiring many of our newest sporting heroes, including heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson.
Denise once said: “You have to think you’re Superwoman to even attempt a heptathlon.” She’s not wrong.
The nation first fell for Essex girl Laura when she pedalled to double-gold glory at London 2012, aged 20, coming top in both the team pursuit, along with fellow riders Joanna Rowsell Shand and Dani Rowe, as well as the omnium.
Four years later at Rio, she successfully defended both titles, then took another gold at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
Away from the track, she is one half of cycling’s golden couple with Olympic champ husband Jason Kenny, 35.
Laura was made a Dame in 2022, and after giving birth to her second child last July, she’s setting her sights on the Paris Olympics this summer. We’re right behind her.
With a career spanning more than 16 years, Tanni’s love of competing kicked off at 17, when she became part of the British Wheelchair Racing squad, before taking bronze in the 400m at the Paralympics in Seoul in 1988.
Four years later in Barcelona, the then 23 year old, who was born with spina bifida, bagged quadruple gold in the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m, as well as becoming the first woman to break the 60-second barrier for 400m.
She bagged her final two golds in Athens 2004, plus won the London Marathon six times between 1992 and 2002.
Tanni was made a Dame in 2005, and five years later became a peer in the House of Lords.
She has championed access for disabled people on public transport, and has been a vocal campaigner for fairness and parity in sport. What a woman!
After training along London’s canals, Christine’s track career went global at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 when she won a gold medal in the 400m.
Four years later, she took silver inside the London Olympic Stadium – a stone’s throw from where she grew up in Newham.
An advocate for sport, she’s credited for inspiring and mentoring athletes, including Dina Asher-Smith, who Christine calls: “My little double”.
She was just 13 – one of the youngest athletes to compete at the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games – when she took home two gold medals for the 100m and 400m freestyles.
Ellie, who was born with dwarfism, then competed in the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics, and collected another seven medals.
She also sashayed her way on to Strictly in 2022, saying if she could happily master the ballroom, then she “can do anything”. We don’t doubt it!
After first competing aged nine, by the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Victoria was top of her game.
She took a gold in the sprint, followed by keirin gold and sprint silver at London 2012.
She’s a fighter beyond the velodrome, too, having faced mental health struggles and the loss of twin brother Alex at 42, of a brain tumour.
She said: “Women are more capable than we think, so go for your goals, even if they seem ambitious.”
According to her mum, Kadeena learned by “doing”. Every time she fell off her bike as a kid growing up in Leeds with her 11 siblings, she’d get straight back up and try again.
And that unwavering persistence is exactly what got the Paralympic athlete, who has multiple sclerosis, to gold-medal glory in both athletics and cycling – winning the T38 athletics 400m and C4 cycling 500m time trial at Rio 2016.
As the first black cyclist to win a Paralympic or Olympic gold for Britain, Kadeena headed to Tokyo 2020 and won two more golds.
Beyond the bike, she survived the I’m A Celebrity! jungle in 2021 and has said her self-belief is what keeps her going. “I wanted to show it can be done even if you have setbacks,” she said. And she’s certainly done that.
KJT first burst on to our radar when she made her Olympic debut in London 2012 at 19, and was dubbed the next Jessica Ennis.
But it wasn’t until Katarina nabbed gold in the 2019 World Championships, with a British-record-breaking score of 6,981 points, that her career went stratospheric.
Her time on the athletics field hasn’t been without its, ahem, hurdles, including an Achilles’ tear in December 2020 and a painful calf injury at Tokyo’s delayed Games in 2021.
But she hasn’t let the setbacks stop her, defying the naysayers to claim gold at the World Championships in Budapest last year.
She is now going for gold at Paris 2024, saying Budapest was “a stepping stone” to Olympic glory.
Jill set the standard for the Lionesses when she made her international debut against the Netherlands in 2006.
Sixteen years later, she helped bring the team to glory on home soil in Euro 2022. By the time she retired, she’d racked up an impressive 150 caps.
Not only is Jill a fighter on the field, but she also proved herself Queen of the Jungle, winning I’m A Celebrity! in 2022.
And while she may no longer be playing professionally, she’s still very much involved in the game, as a regular pundit and as the first female to captain England in the 2023 Soccer Aid for UNICEF charity match.
Originally a PE teacher, Helen won a historic gold medal at London 2012 with rowing partner Helen Stanning, only four years after taking up the sport, then repeated the feat at Rio 2016.
After having her three children with husband environmentalist Steve Backshall, Helen made a comeback at the Tokyo 2020 Games, becoming the first British rower to compete at an Olympics as a mum.
Now, she’s aiming for success in Paris, telling the BBC: “I can be as good as I was in my 20s.”
Is there anything Paralympian Sarah can’t master?
Sarah was born without a functioning left hand and first began her glittering sporting career as a swimmer, but when a serious ear infection kept her out of the pool, she switched gears to cycling.
That decision proved to be the making of her, and the mum of two went on to bag four gold medals at the London 2012 Paralympics, another three at Rio 2016 and three more at Tokyo 2020.
Overcoming bullying and an eating disorder in her early years only appear to have made Britain’s most successful Paralympian of all time even stronger.
With a whopping 17 Paralympic gold medals over a career spanning more than two decades, that is one heck of a winning streak to contend with.
Balancing cramming for A levels alongside preparing to compete in one of the world’s biggest sporting tournaments would be beyond most people.
But not 18-year-old Emma, who made history when she became the youngest British woman to reach the last 16 of Wimbledon in 2021.
And she wasn’t done there, as the Toronto-born, Bromley-raised player delivered another sporting ace just two months later, winning the US Open women’s title, making her the first British woman to win a Grand Slam since Virginia Wade in 1977.
The late Queen even congratulated Emma on her “remarkable achievement” in a letter.
And though 2023 brought the tennis star some setbacks in the form of wrist and ankle surgery, she has started to make a comeback this year.
Paula’s 2003 London Marathon run is one of the most iconic moments in British sporting history.
Finishing in just 2 hours 15 minutes 25 seconds, the girl from Bedford smashed the world record to take the title and racked up a hat-trick of marathon wins each in London and New York.
In 2015 and at the age of 41, she raced an emotional final marathon, crossing the finish line one last time to hugs from her husband and former coach Gary Lough, and her two kids.
Away from the track, she faced personal challenges when her daughter Isla was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2020, but, thankfully, she has since recovered.
