7:00am Saturday 30th August 2008
Female athletes have been sweeping the medal board at the Olympics, but four out of five women in Britain do hardly any exercise.
We investigate why some women think sport is a men-only activity and talk to Sky Sport presenter Kirsty Gallacher about how to get involved.
By Sarah O'Meara Looking sleek, toned and every inch an Olympic gold medallist, cyclist Rebecca Romero poses nude on her bike.
The 28-year-old's naked image has been plastered across billboards in Beijing to advertise sports drink Powerade.
Thousands of miles away, staff at the London-based Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation (WSFF) are keeping their fingers crossed that Romero will inspire a new generation of sportswomen.
Facing the daunting statistic that only one in five women take regular exercise, the UK charity devoted to getting more women into sport knows it's got a problem.
According to the foundation, girls and boys start out with equal levels of activity, but by the time girls reach the age of 16, they are half as active as young men.
"Girls as young as seven stop playing sports because they don't want to seem 'unfeminine'," says WSFF chief executive Sue Tibballs.
"But with images of women like Rebecca looking strong, successful and sexy, they might change their minds."
As Rebecca and 19 other successful female members of Team GB storm the medal table at Beijing 2008, the profile of women's sport in Britain is hitting an all-time high, and Tibballs is keen to make the most of it.
"Usually only two per cent of sports media coverage features women, so being able to see women day after day is like another world," she says, smiling widely.
With the faces of gold medallists 'Three Blondes in a Boat' - yngling winners Sarah Webb, Sarah Syton and Pippa Wilson - plus swimmer Rebecca Adlington, cyclists Rebecca Romero and Nicole Cook and track athlete Christine Ohuruogu splashed across the newspapers, you could be forgiven for thinking that British female athletes have everything going for them.
But Tibballs says this kind of attention is all too rare.
"In terms of investment, women's sport attracts a laughable amount of money," she says.
"So I do find it particularly moving seeing a woman succeed because I know how hard it must have been for her to get there."
Reports have suggested that during training 19-year-old Adlington survives on £250 a week, drives a battered Vauxhall Corsa and struggles to pay for basics like goggles.
Tibballs admits that while Adlington's lottery funding might be less than a third of what her US and Australian competitors receive, money isn't the only issue.
"The manager of England's football team, Fabio Capello, gets paid four times as much as the entire England women's squad," she says.
"There's a £2 million investment in the women's team and he's on £8 million. But that's not the only problem. By age seven, 80% of girls say they're not sporty, because being sporty is fundamentally not seen as feminine."
Naturally drawn to the activities of their peers, the lives of young girls don't tend to have an emphasis on sport.
"I've got a four-year-old boy who's sports mad and I cannot convince him that women play football," Tibballs says.
"He's never seen them and he doesn't experience it in his peer group. I've got to take him to a game."
But hopefully the presence of the women's branch of Team GB on the front of magazines, newspapers and on the radio will help Tibballs and thousands of other parents and teachers prove to children that there's nothing cooler than a girl in a sports vest.
Sky Sports TV presenter Kirsty Gallacher is one of the first to admit that it's not easy being a woman involved in sport.
"In the beginning the female Sky sports presenters had to defend themselves from a lot of rubbish. We were a small group of pioneers. Me, Gabby Logan and Kelly Dalglish had the traditionalists saying, 'What do they know? I don't want to listen to them reading sports news out. They don't know anything'. It was pathetic. I'm proud of being one of the first."
Gallacher, who has just brought out her own fitness equipment range, likes to be a trendsetter. But she believes the industry needs more role models.
"The Olympics is definitely something to aspire to. If girls don't think, 'Wow I want to be an Olympian' after this, what are we doing wrong?"
The 32-year-old mother of one, is a passionate Liverpool FC supporter and regularly hits the treadmill, so she says she was surprised to discover how few women follow her example.
"I'm very shocked to find out that four out of five women do hardly any exercise," she says.
"With the media giving so much attention to health and fitness, it's a great surprise to me."
Despite sporty beauties like Gallacher flying the flag for fitness, Tibballs believes that British attitudes to sport are stuck in the dark ages.
"Nike did research to find out how women see sport in terms of being unsexy and unfeminine and the British were way behind most European countries," she says.
"We came out alongside Turkey in terms of our attitudes. There is something peculiarly British in terms of our identification of sport with men and masculinity."
"Having the Premier League doesn't help," she adds, "because football dominates everything. They get all the sponsorships and media coverage.
"We've recently had great results in women's cricket and rugby but they don't come through. There's still a sense that these players are a) poor quality and b) not very attractive.
"There's a huge old school which still exists, that see sport as a male domain and would quite like to keep it that way. They're the types that do still think it's legitimate to laugh at female weightlifters for not looking pretty. During Wimbledon this year, a top tennis official launched a sexist tirade against female tennis players. He did get sanctioned, but the fact that people like that still exist is extra-ordinary.
"But on the positive side, although there are lots of dinosaurs, I've also never been involved with a campaign that has so much support and momentum. And to be fair, it's often not just women who are left out of sports coverage, but any sport which isn't Premier League football."
At a time when female obesity levels are soaring, rates of activity are on the wane and women are struggling with their body image, Tibballs says that sport could be the answer.
"We are significantly less active than other countries like Australia and the Nordic countries Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. What's great about the Olympics is watching women use their bodies in a strong and confident way. Predominantly the women who are famous in our culture are slim or skinny - the size zero generation. What kind of role model is that?
"It's all about creating that cultural shift where girls grow up to think that doing sport, being fit and healthy is a really aspirational and a good thing."
And of course, despite their honed bodies, female sports stars aren't any less 'feminine' than any other girls.
"Winner of two Olympic swimming golds, Rebecca Adlington, is apparently a bit of a shoe lover," says Tibballs with a laugh.
"I've read that she's looking forward to receiving a pair of Christian Louboutin heels from her mum as a reward for all her hard work."
GET OUT THERE For women aged 16 and over in England, the most popular participation activities, after walking, are: :: 17% Swimming - 359,031 :: 10% Gym - 211,195 :: 5% Recreational cycling - 105,597 :: 4% Athletics (including road running and jogging) - 84,478 :: 3% Aerobics - 63,358 :: For more information about the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation please go to www.wsf.org.uk :: To find out about Kirsty Gallacher's new range fitness range go to www.kirstyfitness.co.uk or www.argos.co.uk
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