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Sport and the Press • 89

The following paragraph reinforced this with another change of narrative direction:
‘the former army sergeant was not simply going to the ball: the golden coach was
heading for her coronation’ (‘Bad Luck’ 2004: 15). As an army sergeant, Holmes
was not straightforward as a bridesmaid or fairy tale princess.
A few lines into the article, the profile reported that Holmes’s Olympic achieve-

ments had actually surpassed those of Coe, who had been constructed as her Prince
Charming. In so doing, the article punctured any cohesion that the Cinderella nar-
rative might have had. The profile went on to characterise her as a ‘geriatic’ (she

was thirty-four) and suggest her injuries were so numerous they would ‘condemn a
horse to the knackers’ yard’ (for the slaughtering of worn out livestock). This rather
less romantic storyline gave way to another: ‘she could destroy the world’s fastest
runners with searing bursts of speed’ (Hills and Kennedy 2009: 121). Hills and Ken-
nedy argued that this narrative unevenness typified the press coverage of Holmes’s

victories. Multiple storylines were arranged around her, without any appearing to be

a good fit. Holmes was not easily incorporated into any of the existing narratives of
athleticism, heroism or female stardom.
At the time of her gold medal–winning performance, Holmes was an unprecedented
heroic figure in terms of the enormity of her achievement. The British medal haul

was substantially greater in the subsequent Beijing Olympics, but in 2004, Holmes’s
victory had not been paralleled for eighty-four years. Holmes was also unusual in the
particular intersection of race, class and gender that made up her social identity.
The photograph of Holmes on the cover of The Sunday Times depicted her smil-
ing, giving a thumbs up sign while holding a Union Jack flag around her shoulders.

The caption underneath praised her as ‘the most successful British middle-distance
runner of modern times’. The accompanying article, however, qualified this by

pointing to her gender—‘the most successful female runner this country has ever
produced’—reinforcing perhaps the inability of a woman to embody the national
heroic without question (‘Golden Joy’ 2004: 1).
Hills and Kennedy (2009) observed that this uneven marking of gender char-
acterised much of Holmes’s coverage in the press—The Sunday Times cover story
described her (perhaps tellingly) as the ‘nearly-woman of British athletics’, while
on page 3, inside the paper, Sebastian Coe was quoted as saying, ‘She ran with
great confi dence and massive authority . . . when it came to fl at-out speed she could
beat anybody’. Rather than trivialise her sporting achievement, the language used to
describe her performance emphasised qualities that have previously been associated
with masculinity: skill, strength, speed, power, tactics. The News of the World used
both ‘Focus’ (Harrison 2004: 104) and ‘Strength’ (Sabey and Bhatia 2004: 6) as
headers, and quoted her saying, ‘I used all my guts and strength’ (Sabey and Bhatia
2004: 6). Clavane (2004: 84), in the Sunday Mirror, described her characteristics as
‘keep on going. Guts. Tunnel vision’ and said she ‘powered over the line’.
There were suggestions that Holmes’s qualities of strength and determination also
affected her personal life. The Sunday Times profile discussed her relationship with

the runner Mutola as formerly ‘one of the closest’ in athletics, but now in a ‘glacial