Finishing last in a Parkrun is not usually the precursor to a life-changing experience, but so it proved for Sam Mollaghan. It was back in 2015 that the then 44-year-old mother of three was scouted to appear in the first This Girl Can campaign and thus became eternally linked with the slogan “I jiggle therefore I am”.

Mollaghan was one of seven “real women” chosen to feature in the national television advert designed to tackle the gender activity gap by showing the importance of being active, no matter your size, shape, age or race. Seeing such diversity on screen was pretty radical at the time.

A decade on, she admits that she did not appreciate the scale of the campaign – “it went crazy” – but she is clear on the impact it has had on her life. She had only recently returned to running when cast in 2015 and says: “This Girl Can came into my life really unexpectedly and on reflection I think I was lacking self-confidence.

“I wasn’t feeling good about myself, but people really believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. Amazing things came from my involvement; it gave me self-belief and a different purpose outside being a mum and a wife and a sister.

‘I embraced the message and then I lived the message’

“At the start I didn’t realise the power of the message about body confidence, but I embraced the message and then I lived the message. Ten years on, I’m still running. There have been breaks with injury and the menopause had an effect, while I’m not as fast as I used to be, but every time I go for a run I’m so glad I’ve done it. Those are the benefits of exercise.”

Glynis Evans is another who has found her confidence boosted by getting involved in the campaign six years ago. Evans has missing fingers on her left hand and wears artificial limbs as a result of amniotic band syndrome, but she has always loved swimming and as she approached her 30th birthday she was made aware of a campaign looking for people with disabilities who had recently got back into sport.

Evans had been a regular swimmer from nine to 11 but the death of her father as well as being the victim of bullying over several years meant she had taken time away from the pool until mid-2019. “I had no self-esteem, no confidence,” she recalls. “I was born with a physical disability and I’d never show my hands or legs. I was ashamed of who I am.”

That all changed when she was signed up by This Girl Can. She had to give serious thought as to whether she wanted to show her body to the world when she realised what the campaign was but she has not looked back since.

“This is how I was born so I decided to stop being shy and be proud of who I am,” she says. “The rest is history. I was watching TV one night and in the break I saw myself and screamed – it was the best feeling in the world. I’ve been through a journey and I have the gift of the gab, I love to impart wisdom. I don’t know if I’d be this person if I hadn’t been part of it; it made me grow wings.”

Seeing women like Mollaghan and Evans on screen has certainly helped This Girl Can, which was set up by Sport England and has received £30 million in National Lottery funding over the past 10 years, deliver on its goals. Three million more women are now active compared to when it launched in January 2015 while eight in 10 women say the campaign has made them more confident about doing so.

Despite those strides made, the gender-activity gap persists with half a million fewer active women than men according to Sport England data. This Girl Can plans to focus on supporting under-represented groups to get active in 2025, including black and Muslim women as well as those on lower incomes.

Other familiar barriers remain, including safety concerns and fear of judgment. This extends across age groups too. As Telegraph Sport’s investigation into British schools’ sport crisis revealed this week, young girls remain far less likely to exercise regularly than boys with 34 per cent of girls saying that they do not enjoy PE at school, two-and-a-half times the proportion of boys.

Sacha Lumley, a fitness trainer who is part of the running group Black Girls Do Run, is a powerful advocate for ensuring women and girls are active, but recognises the areas that need work.

“When young girls leave to go to secondary school, that’s where we see a drop off,” says Lumley. “It’s about puberty and how they perceive themselves and how others perceive them, doing PE with boys, the kit they have to wear…

“Everybody has a right to be active, in their own space and community, and where they feel comfortable. For some that is not the case. We need more spaces and places for women to move comfortably and freely, to not have to think about 10 things before they leave the house to be safe: Are people around? Is it light? Should I wear reflective clothing?”

Lumley has worked with This Girl Can on the safety point with its Lift The Curfew movement, which calls for change to allow women to exercise without fear in the winter months. She encapsulates its overall influence well when saying: “It’s important because it’s specific to women and girls, and it’s successful because it is about every woman, every body, with no stigma.”

Three million women and counting…