It has been another massive couple of weeks for East Staffordshire’s very own sporting hero Adam Peaty. With two individual gold medals and a team silver medal at the swimming world championships in Budapest, as well as smashing his own world record in the 50m breaststroke twice in one day, Adam has shown that he is the best in the world by far.
Did you know he holds the top 10 fastest times ever swum in the 100m breaststroke? A truly remarkable feat as he edges ever closer to the “Project 56” of being the first person ever to swim it in less than 57 seconds.
Sporting heroes are coming thick and fast at the moment as well. Not only has Adam shown the rest of the world how it is done in the swimming pool, but the England cricket team have won the World Cup, and the England football team have made it through to the semi-finals of the European Championships after an historic victory over the French.
Of course, I am talking about the England women’s cricket team and the England’s women’s football team. They may not have received the wall-to-wall coverage that the men’s sporting teams do, but our women’s national teams are certainly seeing more success than the men’s national teams.
Locally we have some other great women’s sporting achievements too. Burton Albion Ladies are seeing a meteoric rise through the leagues, winning both the league and the cup in the last two seasons. Burton Rugby Club’s Ladies XV have also seen some brilliant results.
I think there should be more coverage of women’s sport, and more highlighting of female sporting role models. Unfortunately there is a trend of girls dropping out of taking part in sport. By the age of 16, almost half as many girls are taking part in the recommended about of physical activity a week than boys. And this is a trend that continues on into adulthood.
Sport England is already working hard on changing perceptions and encouraging more women and girls to get back into sport. I am sure you have seen their brilliant This Girl Can advert campaign with women of all ages and all abilities getting active and enjoying themselves through sport.
This campaign has already seen improvements – with 2.8 million women and girls aged 14 to 40 saying they had done more activity as a result of the campaign. Locally the fact that the Lionesses train at the state of the art England football training centre, St. George’s Park, the same as the men’s team can also help to inspire more women and girls to get involved.
But there is more still to do to encourage more women and girls to play sport. And I can’t help but think that if our female sporting role models were given as much coverage as the men then that would help to encourage more girls to take up sport.
If we celebrated Anya Shrubsole as much as Ben Stokes, and Jodie Taylor as much as Harry Kane, just maybe we would have more girls taking part in sport, and many more successes for the England women’s sports teams for many years to come.
