Meet the women breathing new life into old sports

I was about six years old when I first tried eques­tri­an vault­ing. Some of my friends did it, so I went along with them. I’d always liked hors­es, and I actu­al­ly did a bit of gym­nas­tics as well, so I thought, ​‘Why not try them both together?’

My role is a prop: I’m the per­son hold­ing peo­ple up. I’m quite glad that I’m not a fly­er – small peo­ple who are fly­ing up in the air and look­ing upside down – because I could nev­er do that. What I do is prop them and try to keep them safe on the horse. 

There are so many dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters, so many dif­fer­ent age groups. We have peo­ple in the team who are 12, and oth­er team mem­bers in their 30s. It’s such an age range – every­body is in a dif­fer­ent stage of life.

What makes vault­ing stand out? Well, you’re basi­cal­ly danc­ing with a horse! You real­ly have to be aware of what the horse under­neath you is doing. You don’t just have human beings next to you – your horse is a team mem­ber as well; you always have to think about what it’s feeling.

I’m from Ger­many orig­i­nal­ly. I’d say eques­tri­an vault­ing is a lot big­ger there than it is in the UK, although it’s still not real­ly that pop­u­lar. It’s just a small sport in gen­er­al, real­ly – you can go to a high lev­el, but you’ll nev­er get mon­ey out of it, because it’s not as sup­port­ed as dres­sage or jumping.

But it’s fun doing some­thing dif­fer­ent. I would like to see it as an indi­vid­ual sport in the Olympics one day, just to help it get big­ger in the world. In the UK, I hope that more peo­ple will car­ry on com­pet­ing, coach­ing and maybe open their own clubs. Then there’ll be more com­pe­ti­tion as well, and com­pe­ti­tion always helps to build a sport up.

I don’t know yet if I will stay here or go back to Ger­many to study, but I will def­i­nite­ly keep doing the vault­ing either way. Basi­cal­ly, what we’re doing here is try­ing to get peo­ple to know it and to watch it – because it real­ly is an impres­sive sport to watch.

I start­ed rid­ing with the Bike­Life crew about two years ago. Since then, I’ve been on the biggest come up. I’ve learnt loads of new tricks.

I start­ed by watch­ing rid­ers like Wheel­ie Kay, Lit­tle Har­ry, Jake100 – all of them, the big peo­ple up there. When you watch peo­ple on their bikes, the tricks look so good. It’s impres­sive to see, so I thought I might as well do it myself – be one of those impres­sive peo­ple. Peo­ple noticed me from day dot.

What we do with Bike­Life is dif­fer­ent. It gets peo­ple out of trou­ble – as we say, ​‘knives down bikes up’. Peo­ple put down their knives and pick up a bike. There have been quite a few peo­ple that have been in gangs, and they’ve picked up a bike and got out of it all. They met new friends, rode, and got out of trouble.

I’m one of four or five girls in the whole crew. I get loads more respect for that. It is a male-dom­i­nat­ed sport and not a lot of girls ride bikes, because most of them my age are prop­er girly. I’m not one of those people.

My hopes for the future of Bike­Life is that it just keeps get­ting big­ger. Take the BikeStor­mz event, where we do ride-outs. We have 4,000 peo­ple doing it now. One day I could see 20,000 peo­ple rid­ing through Lon­don. I actu­al­ly could –20,000 people!

I’d be so bored with­out rid­ing. I’d have noth­ing to do, except play my PS4. It has giv­en me some­thing to do every sin­gle day, and I get so much respect for it. It’s taught me that no mat­ter who you are, any­one can do what they want. Just keep grind­ing, and you’ll get there. Just keep grinding.

I first got into ref­er­ee­ing when I got asked to vol­un­teer and cov­er for anoth­er ref­er­ee who didn’t turn up that week. I was about 19. At first, my role was just to look after the desk and get the girls signed up. Then one time, the lady who was in charge asked me to go and ref­er­ee the girls’ pitch­es. Week in, week out, the ref­er­ee didn’t turn up and so I car­ried on.

Even­tu­al­ly, I com­plet­ed a ref­er­ee­ing course. I did two years of youth foot­ball and then, in 2016, I start­ed doing the men’s game. I remem­ber for those first match­es I brought all of my fam­i­ly and friends: I was way out of my com­fort zone and I need­ed back­up. But the play­ers liked me and want­ed me to come back again.

My fam­i­ly moved to the UK from Soma­lia when I was 10 years old. We came here because of the civ­il war. I remem­ber a lot of crazy things: a lot of death and bombs going off. It was so scary. We were so lucky to get out of there – I could have been dead by now.

My par­ents are very tra­di­tion­al. They think play­ing foot­ball is not the nor­mal thing a Soma­lian girl would do. In the begin­ning, they were hap­py for me to coach as I wasn’t run­ning around too much. But when I told them I was going to ref­er­ee, they were like, ​‘Oh God, this girl’s not giv­ing up.’

Being a girl is one thing, but I’m also vis­i­bly Mus­lim. I’m just there on the pitch, wear­ing my head-scarf. I think play­ers often see me as a lit­tle girl too, because I don’t look my age. I come into a man’s world and tell them what to do. Some­times I get respect, and some­times you can see and feel their dom­i­nance. But if you get your job done and do things the right way, you get respect.

I nev­er had a role mod­el. Even now, there’s nobody that looks like me that is in this field. So me being vis­i­ble for girls – par­tic­u­lar­ly girls of colour and Mus­lims – it’s just a big respon­si­bil­i­ty. I have to stick at it and make them see that it can be done. If you’re there and you do the job as good as a man would, then I don’t see why you should­n’t be there.

The best way to describe fenc­ing is that it’s like a bug. Once you’ve got it, you can’t get rid of it. It spreads like a fire inside of you. You fence, and then you try and do oth­er sports – but they just don’t feel the same.

The first time I tried fenc­ing, I was eight years old. I was so lit­tle I had to use plas­tic swords because I couldn’t take the weight of the met­al foil. I start­ed because my old­er sis­ter did it at sec­ondary school, and I just want­ed to copy her. Even­tu­al­ly, it took over as my thing, and she quit. I’ve been doing it for 10 years now.

I com­pet­ed for Eng­land when I was 12, and I got to go to Paris. I remem­ber my bag was much big­ger than me, and I was drag­ging it down the road. The first com­pe­ti­tion was such a shock because you get there and there are so many dif­fer­ent girls from so many dif­fer­ent nations.

When I first start­ed, I noticed that a lot of the girls were at pri­vate schools. I’m from a state school, but I didn’t real­ly see it as an issue. When you’re fenc­ing, edu­ca­tion doesn’t mat­ter: you both have the same brains. Every­thing you learn is the same, so I was on an equal play­ing field to every­one. Just because I come from a poor­er back­ground than some of the oth­er girls, it doesn’t mean I can’t accom­plish the same, or more, than what they do.

For me, my biggest chal­lenge has been my men­tal abil­i­ty to pick myself back up once I lose a fight. As I got old­er, I start­ed beat­ing myself up more: every time I lost a fight, every time I lost a hit. Now, I’m start­ing to get a more pos­i­tive men­tal­i­ty. If you’ve been hit, so what? It’s fine. It’s one hit. There are 15 more to get – any­thing can happen.

I feel like fenc­ing has made me a more con­fi­dent per­son because it’s an indi­vid­ual sport. You have to believe in your­self, that’s what it’s taught me. I hope it grows and becomes less of a minor­i­ty sport and more of a pop­u­lar, well-known one. Per­son­al­ly, my goal is to be in the Olympics and to car­ry it on for many, many years.

I start­ed fig­ure skat­ing when I was six and I was ter­ri­ble – I couldn’t do it! I was awful at it, but I loved it. When you’re on the ice, noth­ing else matters.

Now, my life revolves around skat­ing. I can’t imag­ine being with­out it. The feel­ing when you skate well and hear the crowd erupt, it’s the best in the world.

It’s dif­fer­ent from any oth­er sport because of the way it bal­ances sport and beau­ty. When you watch it, it’s almost like an art. You have to be both ath­let­ic and ele­gant, which is why it stands out.

While fig­ure skat­ing is a very tra­di­tion­al, kind of a stuck-up sport, it’s slow­ly being mod­ernised. There’s def­i­nite­ly a dom­i­nant image of a prim and prop­er fig­ure skater, who is tee­ny tiny and skates like a bal­le­ri­na. For me, it’s impor­tant that the sport steps away from that and becomes a bit more diverse in the future.

On a per­son­al lev­el, fig­ure skat­ing has taught me how deter­mined I am. If I want some­thing, then I’ll go and get it. I’ve learnt that if you do work hard at some­thing, you will get there. It’s okay to take longer than oth­er peo­ple, too: it took me ages to get my triple jumps. Every­one else was land­ing them and I couldn’t do them. But if you stick at it, even­tu­al­ly you will get it.

If you go out there and give some­thing 100 per cent, you can’t lose. It doesn’t mat­ter if you fall on your face sev­en times. Everyone’s ter­ri­fied of fail­ure, espe­cial­ly when you stand on that ice in front of loads of peo­ple. But if you get back up, and you try again, you can’t lose. All you can do is learn.