30 YEARS, 30 GAME CHANGERS
OUR RUNNING WORLD HAS GONE THROUGH SOME PRETTY SEISMIC CHANGES IN THE THREE DECADES SINCE RUNNER’S WORLD ARRIVED IN IT. HERE, WE SALUTE 30 KEY FIGURES WHO HAVE BEEN INSTRUMENTAL IN CHANGING THE GAME
01 JESSICA ENNIS-HILL
Olympian and app entrepreneur
MOST OF US WILL be aware of Ennis-Hill’s stellar athletic career – winning heptathlon gold on Super Saturday in the London 2012 Olympics has become a moment etched into the collective national psyche. Ennis-Hill was also a three-time world champion: winning in 2009, 2011 and 2015 – the last of these coming just 15 months after giving birth to her first child, Reggie. It was the experience of returning to competition after Reggie’s arrival in 2014 that inspired her post-retirement career as co-founder of the Jennis fitness app. ‘It was the first time in my life that I properly thought about my hormones and how your body changes as a woman,’ she says. ‘I knew that after I retired, I wanted to create a platform to help women get trusted advice about their hormones and physiology.’ One of Ennis-Hill’s goals with the app is to increase the amount of sportsscience research done specifically on women (at present, less than 10% of studies focus on them) and close the gender data gap.
02 JIM COWAN
Creator of Race for Life
THESE DAYS, running in accessible, welcoming events to raise money for causes close to our hearts is a huge feature of the running lanscape. But 30 years ago, charity running was a much more novel concept, and one in which Jim Cowan spotted some potential. Inspired by his father’s own battle with cancer, he’s credited as the man behind the idea for Race for Life, and acted as race director for the very first event in 1994, which saw 750 participants run 5K around London’s Battersea Park in aid of cancer research. Since then, Race for Life has become one of the nation’s biggest charity fundraising events, raising nearly £1bn and uniting thousands of people, from total beginners to experienced runners, in their collective determination to help beat cancer for good.
03 TEGLA LOROUPE
Runner and campaigner
AS A TWO-TIME NEW YORK City Marathon winner and multiple half marathon world champ, Tegla Loroupe could have been forgiven for taking it easy once she’d hung up her racing shoes. Instead, in 2003, the Kenyan set up the Tegla Loroupe Peace Foundation, designed to help create peace through sports. More recently, she was also instrumental in establishing the first Refugee Olympic Team, which debuted at Rio 2016. That same year, she was awarded United Nations Person of the Year. Few people have used their running profile as a vehicle to create so much good.
