Roar

INTRODUCTION

We Can Do Anything

Sam Quek MBE

HOCKEY PLAYER

In 2016 I stood on an Olympic podium with fifteen teammates united in one crazy, unbelievable moment. As a member of the British women's hockey team, we had just won a historic victory again the Dutch to take the gold medal at the Rio Olympics. The nerve-shredding adrenalin of a match decided on penalties was still coursing through me as the noise of the thousands-strong crowd exploded around the stadium.

At the game's climax it was our defender Hollie Webb who stepped up to take the final penalty shot. Everything we had worked for as a team, everything we had practised time and again in training, rested on eight short seconds. It felt like a lifetime. As she dribbled right, then left towards the Dutch keeper, finally landing the ball in the back of the net, disbelief, joy and relief flooded through me. With my arms wide open, I ran towards my teammates and we hugged and jumped and danced. Afterwards, when I scanned the stands to find my mum, dad and my now-husband Tom, they were standing with tears streaming down their cheeks.

For the fans at the Deodoro Stadium that day, plus the ten million people watching on TV around the world, it was a tournament that became the defining event of UK women's hockey. Only two years before, we had come eleventh in the World Cup. We were ranked seventh in the world. We had beaten the Dutch previously but they were seen as the dominant, invincible force. Plus, the GB women's squad had never brought home a gold medal from an Olympic final.

Yet from the outset everything had clicked into place. Not long after we touched down in Brazil we found ourselves playing in perfect harmony. 'Shall we just call it a day now?' our coach Danny Kerry had joked after he blew the whistle on our first practice session. Normally in pre-tournament warm-ups, your body feels heavy and your lungs ache from the flight. Play feels stodgy and the ball clumsily pings off your stick as you try to trap it. Not this time. This time the ball moved smoothly. We moved smoothly. Something weird was in the air and we knew it. Danny knew it, too. We were a winning team before our gold medals were ever placed around our necks.

Fast-forward six years and I was sitting in the stands at Wembley waiting to watch the England Women's football team file on to the pitch. I'd travelled to see the Lionesses' final against Germany in Euro 2022 with my friend Kirsty - a fellow Rio Olympics squad member and someone I'd known since we were teenagers, working our way up through the junior ranks in international hockey.

On the way there, we'd paused to take in the sweep of Wembley Way and watch the crowds swarming towards the stadium to the backdrop of car horns beeping and flags proudly displaying the St George's Cross.

'Can you believe it?' we said to one another. We knew the game was a sell-out - with England in the final it had become one of the hottest tickets in town - but there was something about being slap bang in the middle of it, noticing young girls smiling and laughing with their families and dressed in their England strips that stopped us in our tracks.

Once inside the stadium, that feeling only got stronger: 'Wow! All of these people are here to see women's football? Oh. My. God. This is amazing,' we said. In fact, the 87,000 fans poised to watch one of the most thrilling games of the season turned out to be the most to witness any men's or women's European Championship final in the UK's sporting history. As for the game itself, at times it left us both speechless. The entire tournament had already been marked out by its breathtaking quality of play, but this felt like women's football had reached another stratosphere. The Lionesses played with an effortlessness, confidence and freedom that reminded me of how we felt during our Rio final. Similarly, the match came down to the wire with forward Chloe Kelly stabbing home the final goal in the 110th minute in extra time. Everything clicked. It sounds cheesy, but it really is the stuff that dreams are made of.

For me, it was Chloe's winning-goal celebration that summed up everything, and not just for women's football, but for the whole of women's sport. As she turned and ran into the penalty area, she tore off her jersey to reveal her sports bra, swinging her strip around her head as she ran. One moment of unstoppable, irrepressible joy that got her a yellow card, but in my view it was a stroke of genius. I'd be surprised if there was a woman watching who didn't think, 'Go on, girl!' Overnight, it became the defining image of a new era. To me it said, 'I'm a woman. We're women doing great things and this is the female body achieving great things.'

Women's sport has never looked or felt so good as it does now, in 2023. In the past decade or so, individual successes and team victories have taken centre stage in ways I couldn't have imagined at the start of my career. Following the introduction of National Lottery funding for elite sport in 1997, the London 2012 Olympics saw a roster of women become household names. Heroines like heptathlete Jess Ennis-Hill, rower Katherine Grainger, boxer Nicola Adams and cyclist Laura Kenny were all elevated to gold-medal superstars. Two years later, England's triumph at the 2014 Rugby World Cup became a catalyst that has led to the Roses dominating the leaderboard in the Six Nations Championship. In tennis, the sight of an eighteen-year-old Emma Raducanu smashing it at the US Open in 2021 is another history- making moment imprinted on my brain - the line-up of stellar achievements is just too long to list here.

But the reality that women caught up in the sheer exhilaration of loving their sport has not always been embraced may surprise many of those young girls that Kirsty and I watched as we made our way down Wembley Way. Women's sport as we are enjoying it now is only the result of many, many women breaking down the barriers that have either prevented them from participating in sport or stopped them from being visible.

Sadly, history is littered with so many stories of women being banned from sports such as boxing, football or running, or having to meet in secret just to compete together. In the past, sport for women has been labelled unfeminine, socially unacceptable or too dangerous. I only need to look to my own sport - hockey. A match report from the first ever league game in 1890 says it all: 'When the teams took up their positions they made a pretty scene. the spectacle was quite animating, not to say charming.' Today, I dare any pundit to write that about the truly awe-inspiring women who have sweated, bled and beamed their way into the history books.

But while our changing landscape feels far more positive, some hangovers from that outdated era still exist. In 2022, the Northern Ireland women's football manager Kenny Shiels attributed his side's loss to women being 'more emotional' than men. In other words, women are still not seen as strong enough for the cut and thrust of competitive sport. Judging by archaic comments like that, we still have a long way to go.

There are other challenges, too. Fears that any gains made in achieving parity in women's sport may have been wiped out by the Covid-19 pandemic are real. Cancelled seasons for women's sports resumed long after men started playing again. Lack of access to training equipment and space to train during lockdowns also put a disproportionate number of women on the back foot, given that more female teams lack dedicated training facilities. And funding and sponsorship that existed pre-pandemic is not guaranteed going forward.

Elite sportswomen are also demanding more attention is given to issues that uniquely affect them. Many more now want to train and compete during pregnancy and after childbirth, yet only a handful of governing bodies have woken up to how this might be achievable. Scientific study around women's physiology is also only just scratching the surface about how periods or menopause can affect women athletes throughout their careers.

Debate about the inclusion of transgender athletes alongside balancing fairness and safety in sport for biologically female athletes is also a live issue. It's a conversation that has become polarized in the media, yet deserves open, nuanced and ongoing discussion. Like many of the female athletes I talk to, I want to guard against the risk of unfair advantage when it comes to athletic ability. However, I believe both inclusion and fairness at all levels of sport are possible.

Away from elite competition, participation of schoolgirls in sport remains significantly lower than that of boys. In so many of the schools I visit, girls tell me that being judged and lack of confidence are reasons why many lose interest in sport as they become teenagers. That sport is still not considered cool for girls is a real bugbear of mine, especially when there's so much raw talent out there turning outdated stereotypes on their head.

Girls being denied access to certain sports at school, such as contact games like rugby or football, is also holding us back. As I write, the UK government has pledged to make the same sports available to both boys and girls in schools, wherever wanted. It's an encouraging move and it will be interesting to see how much take-up there is. But a historic lack of visible female role models in those sports may also be another reason why...