Seb Coe calls her "relentless". By that he means she is one of the most driven and determined women he has encountered in sport. And he terms her project "sensational".

Outside of athletics aficionados few may know of Connie Henry. She won a Commonwealth bronze medal in the triple jump for England in Kuala Lumpur in 1998.

Subsequently she immersed herself making a career in broadcasting, working behind the mic for the IAAF and boxing promoter Frank Warren, as an engaging and perceptive interviewer of sports personalities.

She gave this up three years ago to return to her alma mater in Willesden, North London, to set up and run her own athletics academy for local youngsters in one of the city's most deprived areas.

This week all the hard work and dedication came to fruition when the Academy was recognised by the internationally prestigious Laureus Sport for Good Foundation as a worthy cause for their support.

Hence the presence of LOCOG chief Lord Coe and, among other luminaries, Michael Johnson and Sir Steve Redgrave to formally cement the partnership at the packed Willesden Sports Centre this week.

As Coe said: "This is exactly the kind of thing that will help us achieve an Olympic legacy of getting more young people involved in sport. It is a way sport helps them fashion their future."

Moreover, it is doing so without Government assistance.

Olympic bronze medal hurdler Natasha Danvers,one of the Academy's trustees, says of Henry: "It is very easy in athletics to walk away and give nothing back. Connie hasn't done that. She has offered kids the kind of support that changes lives."


What makes 39-year-old Connie Henry (pictured), and her Academy, so special is that the kids, the majority from ethnic minorities in the area, are offered, in addition to athletics coaching, education in the way of extra studying, tutoring support and personal mentoring, skills she acquired in her time both as a coach and teacher.

To join the Academy they must be employed, in education or vocational training, though Henry and her team will help them in this respect.

Children growing up in Brent, particularly on infamous estates like Stonebridge, are under constant pressure to join gangs, run drugs and get involved in crime. As Henry points out, sport or physical, activity at any level has the unique ability to inspire and ultimately to show youngsters that they can achieve whatever they set their mind to.

It is, she admits, unlikely that many of the 500 enrolled at the Track Academy will become Olympians but through sport they will be inspired to understand what it takes to lead a successful and fulfilling life.

"If the Track Academy creates Olympic athletes along the way, then it is a valuable by-product of what the project is trying to achieve," she says.

"The fact is that kids are not coming into athletics these days so we must take the sport to them."

With financial support from Laureus, whose Foundation embraces 84 projects around the world promoting the use of sport for social change, Connie's Class of 2011, which has the services of ten coaches led by Clarence Callender, looks set to blossom.

A heartening example of how, as Natasha Danvers says, ex-athletes can put their experience and knowledge to practical use once the running, jumping and throwing are done.

Which bring us to another inspirational figure. It has been my week for encountering sporty ladies who are both doughty and delightful.

It is good to report that across in east London, deep in Olympic heartland, another sports Academy, founded by former Olympic javelin gold medallist Tessa Sanderson is back in the business of helping to creating new champions.

A couple of months ago Sanderson fell out big time with her backers, Newham Council, following a funding row and quit her role Olympic as director of the highly successful Newham Sports Academy.

But our Tessa is as equally "relentless" as Connie Henry and she has re-grouped and re-established the Academy and her own Tessa Sanderson Foundation at Newham Sports College, where she believes she may have discovered the new Daley Thompson.


To do so she has courageously picked up the baton discarded by Newham Council, who while apparently cash-strapped, are still managing to subsidise the refiguring of the Olympic Stadium for West Ham's anticipated tenancy with £40 million borrowed from The Treasury.

The 1984 Olympic champion was understandably aggrieved at this, and also by her exclusion from voting on the future of the stadium despite being a member of the Olympic Park Legacy Company Board.

There was some acrimony surrounding her subsequent departure from the Academy where she had nurtured around 70 potential Olympians.

But she tells me: "That's all behind us now. We're moving on again thanks to the support of Newham College of Further Education."

The youngster who she believes can become one of Britain's best all-round athletes is 18-year-old Montserrat-born Jahmal Germain, She first talent-spotted him training at a local leisure centre 18 months ago.

"He was originally a sprinter but he is developing into fantastic decathlete."

Germain, coached by Greg Richards, who assisted Thompson in his spectacular career,scored 6,315 points in a recent competition against the best UK's senior and junior decathletes which puts in the top five of his age group.

"He is getting better all the time," says Sanderson. I am really excited about him, but of course what he needs now is sponsorship.

"For me Daley has always been the greatest but this lad is such a natural it's unbelievable."

The grittiness and gumption of sportswomen like Connie Henry and Tessa Sanderson in putting so much of their time and expertise back into the grass roots of thee game into the game is a refreshing reminder that modern sport is not completely dominated by avaricious.salacious bed-hopping super-injuncting superstars.

As the song says, thank heaven for little girls. Or in this case big ones. More power to their respective elbows.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.