On 25 August, the World Athletics Champion ships begin in Osaka. Britain will be without their one solid gold medal hope: Paula Radcliffe. The burden of hope in the women’s events now rests almost entirely on Jessica Ennis, a 21-year-old heptathlete from Sheffield. The 2012 Olympics remain a rallying call for stars for the future, but the current reality is that, in the three top-profile women’s sports – athletics, tennis, golf – British women rarely occupy a place at the top table.
Britain is still limping along behind the pack, and this might have something to do with there being alarmingly few sportswomen to choose from. A number of recent reports, by UK Sport, the Women’s Sports Foundation and Sport England, have confirmed the news. In Britain, 40 per cent of girls drop out of all sporting activity by the time they are 18. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, almost double the proportion of men to women take part in sport; and half of the women in the UK do little or no physical activity at all.
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