Many young women think sport is unfeminine and they would rather be thin than fit, something I blogged about a few months ago. So the Olympics may be a great opportunity to inspire them to view sport in a different light, particularly as there will be lots of female role models achieving amazing things.

Debbie Flood is aiming for gold in the women's quad rowing race. She is a committted Christian and is interviewed in today's Guardian:

"My faith is really important to me. I look back on my life and see that I have been put in these places which appear to be random, but as I see it I have found something that I am really good at and God has put me here as a witness for him. He has got my life in his hands and this is where he is taking me," she said.

I love Wimbledon - not because I'm a tennis fan but because it's about the only point in the year when there's substantial coverage of women in sport. I often look through the sports section of the newspaper I get to see if there is any mention of any women - and usually there isn't. There must be so many women taking part in sport, professionally and for pleasure, and yet there is such a monopoly of media coverage of men playing sport, particularly football. Does this annoy anyone else, or is it just me?!

Paula Radcliffe has said publicly that she’s disappointed that Christine Ohuruogu didn’t make more of an effort to get to one of the three missed drugs tests that resulted in her year’s ban from athletics. Christine, who won the 400m gold medal in Osaka this year, has now been cleared to compete in the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and joins Paula in the shortlist for the BBC sport’s personality of the year award.

According to a report published today, 80 per cent of women are doing too little exercise to be healthy. The Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation found that among young women in particular, sport is seen as unfeminine and girls would rather be thin than fit. Negative experiences of sport at school and low body confidence mean that while the whole of the UK needs more exercise, women do worse than men. 16 to 24-year-old women are half as active as men for example, and exercise levels are even worse for low income and minority ethnic women.