Every now and again, a little inspiration is all that’s needed to boost your confidence and get you back on that journey to achieving your latest goal. In sports, it can be particularly difficult for women as quite often they’re unfairly overshadowed in the media by men. However, every now and again this mould is broken and a truly exceptional female athlete rocks the world.
Paula Radcliffe
Cross country champion, 3000m European Cup bronze medal holder, 5000m IAAF Grand Prix bronze medal winner, 5000m European Cup champion, 5,000m Commonwealth Games champion, 10,000m European champion, Marathon World Champion and world record holder.
Paula Radcliffe became a beloved British sports star over many years of ups and downs, where she has overcome both debilitating injury and painful humiliation, eventually retiring after the London Marathon in 2015.
In a sport that’s always been, and very much still is, dominated by African athletes, Radcliffe’s achievements are even more impressive and a setting of a world record time that’s now stood for more than a decade is the icing on the cake. Today, Radcliffe is credited with inspiring a nation of young women to don their lycra and enjoy both competitive and non-competitive running.
Ronda Rousey
Unbeaten, with her opponents never getting further than round 1, until her 2015 meet with Holly Holm, Ronda Rousey is considered one of the best MMA fighters in the world.
Before taking the MMA world by storm, Rousey has also competed in other typically male dominated sports and even won a bronze medal in Beijing 2008.
Not only is Rousey a champion, just like Paula Radcliffe, she’s an inspiration for achieving the impossible. She has overcome a world of obstacles to become a champion in a sport which is generally considered ‘male territory’.
Jennifer Tilly
Moving away from the acting world where she starred in Frasier, nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Bullets over Broadway and going on to star in a number of other hits, including Jim Carrey’s Liar Liar, Jennifer Tilly decided to try her hand at a different challenge: professional poker.
In fact, Tilly is one of the most successful female poker players ever, winning a WSOP bracelet in 2005. However, despite her successes, Jennifer Tilly speaks openly about how she, and fellow female competitors, are regularly underestimated in such a male dominated sport. She doesn’t let that stop her though and now has a career spanning a decade.
Nicola Adams
The Baby Faced Assassin was the first female boxing champion at the Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. As well as these achievements she is also the reigning Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European flyweight champion.
Not only does she have the added pressure of being involved in a sport that, until recently, has only ever had male representatives, she is also openly bisexual making her the first openly LGBT person to win Olympic boxing gold and she was also named Britain’s most influential LGBT person by The Independent.
These four women are all from different walks of life, different sports and have achieved very different things but one thing they all have in common is the obstacles they’ve overcome to achieve the amazing things they have and that’s exactly what makes each one of them inspirational.