Congrats to the Lionesses! Now it’s time to shift the goalposts even further

Last Sunday at a packed Wembley Stadium, England’s Lionesses won the Euro 2022 final, after beating Germany 2-1, in front of 90,000 fans and a women’s football TV audience of 17.4 million – almost double the number who viewed the semi-final against Sweden, which amassed nine million viewers.

It was an incredible achievement (not to mention England’s first Euro victory since 1966), which affirms the enormous strides women’s football has made in the past decade. As Lioness Georgia Stanway said: “Life’s changed for the future generation. We’ve definitely inspired a nation here today. We want people to jump on the bandwagon.”

On the same day, in the Vosges Mountains in France, the Dutch rider Annemiek van Vleuten cycled to victory in the inaugural Tour de France Femmes. If you haven’t heard of the event, don’t worry. Tour de France Femmes is the female version of the more-famous Tour de France cycling race – the first held since 1989. But while its all-male counterpart is seen as one of the ultimate sporting endurance tests – 3,400km over 24 days – Tour de France Femmes is just 1,000km in little over a week. Clearly, some of the decision makers think women are physically ill-equipped to cope with the durability of the Tour de France itself. But they’re wrong. How do I know? Because I’ve done it.

Ten years ago this summer, I completed the one-off Tour de Force, which saw amateur riders tackle the Tour de France circuit one week before the professionals (including eventual winner Bradley Wiggins) did. For three weeks, I traversed up to 250km of tarmac each day, strived up steep Alpine mountains and cycled during a bad bout of gastric flu. Yes, it was brutal, but I finished. But if I could do it – a passionate weekend cyclist who loves taking their two wheels out on Oxfordshire lanes – what could real professional female cyclists achieve?

Perhaps the progress women have made in marathon and ultra-endurance running shows the way. Fifty-five years ago, there was an hour-long gap between the male and female world record times for the marathon. Today, that’s been reduced to just 13 minutes. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that elite women might eclipse the men’s record within our lifetime.

Women are also beating men in ultra-endurance events: see Fiona Kolbinger becoming the first woman to win the 4,000km Transcontinental in 2019 or ultra-runner Jasmin Paris, who beat 136 participants, including 125 men, to win the gruelling 268-mile Montane Spine Race the same year (she was also expressing milk along the way due to breastfeeding). While there is a biological explanation behind these successes (scientists believe women have a greater proportion of ‘slow-twitch’ muscle fibres which are more resistant to fatigue), it’s clear that sports organisers should be taking this into account.

Inclusivity in sport matters. In many ways, sport can be more progressive on diversity equity and inclusion (DE&I) than governments – see Premier League players opposing racism by taking the knee, England player Jordan Henderson tweeting a message of support to a queer non-binary fan during Euro 2021, or the current Commonwealth Games, which includes medals won by para-athletes in a nation’s overall tally.

So, whenever sports lag behind, such as my beloved cycling (the Tour de France only scrapped bikini-clad podium girls two years ago!), it jars. Even our Lionesses aren’t immune: there’s been talk of squad’s lack of diversity (just three black players), which indicates a pipeline problem.

It’s a visibility problem too: the Tour de France is one of the largest sporting events in the world, yet viewers of all ages aren’t seeing women in the race. This issue of visibility is an important one. Despite a 2018 Nielsen report indicating that 84% of sports fans have an interest in women’s sports, studies show that just 0.4% of the total commercial investment (in sport) is given to women’s sport. Part of the impetus to founding Moving Ahead was to tackle this: to effect change in decision-making and funding in sport, so that, for example, we are able to see the Lionesses on TV, or equivalent.

A year after I founded Moving Ahead, history was made again in April 2015, when the men and women’s Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Race teams raced on the same day for the first time. We’ve come a way since 1927, when newspapers reported that “large and hostile” crowds gathered on the towpath to jeer at the inaugural Women’s Boat Race. As the Guardian wrote in 2015, “On this day… the oar of history gave the 186-year-old race a much-needed prod”. But crucially, the event was also broadcast live for the first time ever.

In a roundabout way, my 2012 Tour de Force experience created the impetus to found Moving Ahead two years later. The disregard for a women’s tournament inspired me to examine diversity in sports and business, while my event mentor, Welsh pro-cyclist Yanto Barker, reaffirmed my conviction that mentoring can change lives.

Since then, I’m proud to say Moving Ahead has instigated change in the sporting sector as well as business. Our Mission Include programme is helping improve diversity in sport while our work with sporting organisations such as Sport England is hopefully changing the governance structures.

We’ve also had a bounty of top sportspeople speaking at our Summits, including Dame Kelly Holmes, Colin Jackson, Dame Katherine Grainger and Nigel Owens. Our clients are inspired by these talks: as humans we’re fascinated with pushing boundaries and becoming better versions of ourselves, whether that’s striving for Olympic gold or seeking promotion for a role we want. As Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson told our Inclusion & Diversity Summit, “Athletes fail more than they win.” Yes, Tanni’s got 11 Paralympian golds, but she’s failed many more times, and has learned to reframe these setbacks to win more. Which businessperson can’t identify with that?

Sport, as Nelson Mandela once said, has the power to change the world. It’s a great leveller, stripping away hierarchies and uniting some of the most divisive elements in society. Tour de France Femmes needs to be more challenging, but our incredible Lionesses have shown that the fight to achieve greater gender parity in sport shouldn’t always have to be such an uphill struggle.