IT IS 4.15pm at the Emirates stadium on Thursday and Dame Kelly Holmes has arrived. She is here for the final session of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation Conference and begins with some instructions: “Ladies, I guess you have been sitting down all day. Up on your feet, time for some exercise.”

In an instant, 400 delegates rise. In a second they have their hands above their head, waving their arms around before stretching their legs. At the back, people are even standing on tables to watch Holmes direct the routine. It is fitting that the next discussion is about leadership. As Holmes walked into this suite at the home of Arsenal Football Club, she had the audience in her hands. They hung on every word from Britain’s double Olympic gold medallist, entranced by a woman who had succeeded at the very highest level. Holmes spoke, they followed. Now the mission is to find more women who can show the way in British sport to motivate others – as much in the boardroom as out on the track.

It is less than nine months until the start of the Olympic Games in Beijing and of the 28 summer sports, Britain has only five women in the position of performance director or team manager.

Action has begun with a joint leadership development programme between UK Sport, the British Olympic Foundation and the Central Council for Physical Recreation (CCPR) to make a change at the top level.

Fifteen women from the middle management of 14 different sports, from the Football Association to gymnastics, attend courses during the year with top businessmen and women revealing leadership skills.

Sue Campbell, the chair of UK Sport, the organisation responsible for developing sport in Britain, is determined that the number of women in top positions in sport increases. “We are trying to remove as many barriers as we can,” she says. “There are external barriers, such as perception, and a lot of internal barriers. Women do not have the same type of confidence that they are capable of leading in this way. They are often intuitively very different and we have to make sure that we build their confidence and, at the same time, build their competence.”

Campbell has seen a domino effect, having started from scratch the National Coaching Foundation and the Youth Sport Trust. “I acted like a magnet for good women professionals,” she says. “A lot of women wanted to work in an organisation where they could see a woman at the helm and that is interesting. It makes women believe they can succeed and it takes away the thought that they can only get to a certain level.

“The norm of management is that people expect to see a male style and women are different. They are not better, or worse. When you engage women in leadership it is very complimentary, and if you look at some of the women who have succeeded in business, they have done so by remaining positively female. What makes a good woman leader? It is what makes a good leader. It is somebody who is confident, passionate about their vision and who has the confidence to communicate that and to motivate and inspire staff. You are not a leader unless someone wants to follow you.”

The aim is that by the 2012 Olympics in London – but more probably beyond – more women will be in higher positions as performance directors or team managers, rather than those of synchronised swimming, handball, judo, triathlon and weightlifting, as is the case as Beijing edges closer.

Holmes, who won the 800m and 1500m in Athens three years ago, insists women must not be scared to apply for a top job. “There are not enough [women] in the world of sport,” says Holmes. “But there are some high-quality people out there working in sport who could be in those posts. I don’t know whether they don’t go for them because they don’t think they will get them, or whether they are not given the knowledge that they are available.

“It is about making their mark, and when a post does come up, they must be confident enough to go for it and hold their own against everyone else, proving they are good enough. It should not always be: I’m a woman and a you are a man. It should be: who is good enough?”

Jennie Price, the chief executive of Sport England, the government body that looks after the promotion and funding of sport, has a background as a construction lawyer. She has been in this role for only eight months and it was at a junior taekwondo event at Wembley where she was most enlightened.

“There were eight boys and two girls competing,” says Price. “I went to talk to the girls, who said it was nice to see a woman on the platform [speaking] for a change. They identified with it. I have worked at chief executive level for 10 years and in most industries, women are in a substantial minority.”

Ironically, Britain has some of the best competitive sportswomen in the world: Paula Radcliffe is the marathon world record-holder, Victoria Pendleton has won three world cycling titles this year, her teammate Nicole Cooke won the women’s equivalent of the Tour de France, while at the world athletics championships in Osaka this summer, four of the five British medals were won by women, led by Christine Ohuruogu’s 400m triumph.

Yet, the statistics show that just a fifth of women in the United Kingdom do enough exercise to be healthy. As Sue Tibballs, the chief executive of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, says: “If you see sport as a route that you [follow to] ideally then play competitively and professionally, you pick up more boys and then men rather than girls and women. Strategically, how sport is seen, it remains very driven by what men are doing.”

Holmes is determined to improve the figures of 36% of girls between 13 and 15 discarding sport. “We need to encourage them to exercise with friends, go to the gym, for walks and on bike rides,” she says. “Things that you can find that are fun.”

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