Our sportswomen’s greatest summer yet
England beat France to get to the semi-finals of Euro 2017 – and there could be much more still to come
IT HAS been the subject of much handwringing and heartfelt debate in recent years: how to make women’s sport as popular with fans as men’s events?
But this summer, British sportswomen have provided their own glaringly straightforward solution – by simply being more successful than their male counterparts. England’s victory over their cross-channel rivals at football’s Women’s Euro 2017 quarter-finals last night gave the nation yet another reason to celebrate after a series of triumphs for female sport on the international stage.
The team now marches on to the semi-finals later in the week, when they will take on the hosts, the Netherlands, in Enschede. “Bring it on,” said goalscorer Jodie Taylor after the match. “I just can’t wait to play the semi. We all said we’d love to play Holland – it’ll be like playing Canada at the World Cup.”
Not only have England’s women shown the men how to do it – the men last made it to the semifinals of a major football tournament at the home
Euros in 1996 – but it means this is the best ever summer of female sporting success from these shores, with strong results in cricket, tennis and athletics. It seems their successes are inspiring one another, with
England right-back
Lucy Bronze saying the football team share tips with the women cricketers, who were victorious in the World
Cup earlier this month. She said the successes of other women provided “huge motivation for us to keep that going because we’ve had to work really hard to get this sort of positive coverage.”
And it’s not just team sports riding the wave of success. In tennis, Johanna Konta went one better than Andy Murray at Wimbledon this year by reaching the semi-finals. Heather Watson was a losing finalist in the mixed doubles – and Jordanne Whiley won the wheelchair doubles title while 11 weeks pregnant.
London also played host to the World Para Athletic Championships this month, where women were again to the fore in the gold rush. Among them, Hannah Cockcroft took her tally of world titles to 10 and Georgina Hermitage smashed her own world record at 400m on the way to the top of the podium.
And there is still time for it to get much, much better. The World Athletic Championships begin in London on Friday, and all eyes will be on Scotland’s Laura Muir, who goes for gold at 1,500 metres and 5,000 metres after a tumultuous year in which she has set five British and two European records as well as winning two European indoor gold medals.
And then there is the women’s Rugby World cup to come in Ireland next month, with England one of the favourites. Pity then, that the RFU has decided to end the contracts of the women’s team immediately after the tournament ends, despite the cost of the team taking up less than 1 per cent of the organisation’s income.
Perhaps the good news about Britain’s women has still to reach Twickenham.
‘Bring it on! We all said we’d love to play Holland – it’ll be like playing Canada at the World Cup’