Victoria Pendleton is petite, beautiful and has taken her clothes off for a photo shoot. But, unlike the legion of Big Brother contestants and Z-list celebrities who populate the daily lives of British youngsters, she is also a winner, which is why she has been chosen to inspire a generation of girls into sport.

Pendleton, the winner of six World Championship gold medals, is the face of Girls4Gold, a campaign to find the Olympians of the future, young women aged between 17 and 25 who might have been discouraged by the looming demands of becoming a top-flight athlete or have not yet discovered which sport could bring them, like Pendleton, fame and a cabinet full of medals.

Young women are notoriously quick to drop out of organised sport, leaving a vacuum that UK Sport is determined to fill. Pendleton, from Stotfold in Hertfordshire, remembers her struggle to make her mark as a youngster, not moving into cycling full time until she was 22.

“It is a cultural thing,” she said yesterday, against the backdrop of the Manchester Velodrome, where she is spending hundreds of hours pounding out the training miles. “Sport wasn't mentioned or talked about among the girls I knew. Boys all wanted to be cricketers or footballers, but the girls, like me, had no idea about elite sport.

“I could have ended up doing something mundane, but I was lucky to be spotted and given a chance that I took. Now other girls are getting that chance. I say if you fancy a go and have the talent, then give it a shot. I have experienced fantastic things and had a fantastic life because of sport, and others could do the same.”

Just how difficult it is to attract girls was underlined by a similar campaign last year, called Sporting Giants, which looked for the tallest potential athletes in the population. The response was huge, with more than 3,800 youngsters taking part in the sifting process, but boys outnumbered girls four to one. Chelsea Warr, UK Sport's talent scout, said: “There are girls out there who have the talent, but they have just not been given any structured way of finding that out, which is what Girls4Gold is about.”

The Beijing Olympics is only 56 days away and will be Pendleton's chance to shine as a favourite for at least one gold medal. But Girls4Gold signals the sweep for the next generation of athletes to replace stars such as Pendleton, 27, and take part in Britain's biggest sporting showcase at London 2012.

The Sporting Giants programme yielded 58 potential world-class athletes, who have been steered into the depleted sports of volleyball, handball, rowing and canoeing. But UK Sport also started a new search this week among almost 1,000 young footballers who have been discarded from professional academies around the country. Letters from UK Sport are dropping on their doormats inviting them to attend an assessment day to discover whether they can adapt their footballing skills to another sport.

According to Dave Brailsford, the performance director for British Cycling, adapting from one sport to another is not a problem. Technique can be taught quickly, but desire is the one ingredient coaches cannot provide. “They have to really want it,” he said. “It is the grind that makes the difference and the athletes who come through these programmes will have the attribute of determination even when things are going badly.

“People ask me why we are looking for new cyclists when we have Victoria, who is a medal-winner. But why have one medal and one person on the podium when we can have three? That's what this search is all about.”

More information on Girls4Gold at uksport.gov.uk/girls4gold