In battling back from injury and succeeding purely by her own efforts, Kelly Holmes has proved herself a real winner.

SPORT is about a lot more than winning medals. Swifter, higher, stronger is all very well, but is only half the story. Being able to score goals, tries or runs is gratifying but pretty meaningless if it's all too easy.

Which is why Kelly Holmes is a true champion. And why it was wonderful that she was voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year on Sunday.

Previous winners have included racing drivers, which always seemed daft. However skilful drivers are, they are still only part of a team, utterly reliant on engineers and mechanics - the boys in the backroom, at the drawing board, in the pits are the true champions of the track. Without them, racing drivers are nothing.

Kelly Holmes can run fast, very fast. A fine mixture of natural ability and hard training. But what make her a champion are the times when she couldn't run at all. For seven years out of nine she was injured, but she refused to give up and just worked harder, was even more determined to triumph.

And she did. And while we all admire her physical skill, it's her mental endurance that we recognise and applaud - that refusal to give up.

You get it in other walks of life, of course. Think of all those rejected novelists, actors and inventors who keep slogging away until they finally make it. But it's particularly common in sport, from the humblest level up.

Government ministers are getting themselves concerned about sport in school at the moment, worried about the rising tide of obesity and associated illnesses among children.

Of course we should encourage school sport, for the sake of our children's physical fitness and health. But that's only one small part of it - as Kelly so gloriously proved.

REMEMBER there used to be one of those public service ads that encouraged people to "park prettily"? The trick was to park neatly so you didn't take up any more space than you needed.

I thought of that in the car park in Durham the other day, where 20 badly parked cars were taking up spaces that could have catered for 30, if they'd been neatly parked, while frustrated motorists drove round and round in circles trying to find a space and getting ever crosser.

So while you're doing your last minute shopping, do your bit for festive cheer and park prettily. Santa will be proud of you.

Will mums ever

have a chance?

TWENTY years ago I led a small consumer campaign against sweets at supermarket checkouts, always so cunningly positioned that they were just the right height for a toddler in a trolley to grab, thus forcing mother to buy.

The boys and I were filmed at Morrisons in Darlington and the item kept popping up on TV for years. It didn't do much good though.

Now a new survey by the National Consumer Council has criticised supermarkets for the way in which they encourage unhealthy eating - too much space devoted to junk food and yes, sweets at checkouts.

Maybe in another 20 years the message might get through.

Making men into mindless children

WHAT on earth have we done to our men? The latest wizard wheeze is a crche for men who can't cope with shopping. Poor dears. M&S in Gateshead and other stores have a little corner with toy cars and bowls of sweeties - not for truculent, tired toddlers but where the men can play while their wives slog round the rails.

Ha ha. How very amusing.

It actually has very sinister undertones - of how women see men, of how women get bolder and men are made infantile. And it shows how by encouraging men to be hopeless, women are - yet again - making more work for themselves.

Do these men not mind being treated like toddlers? Have they no self-respect?

If the man in your life really hates shopping, then don't take him with you.

Leave him at home and let him get on with something useful - the cleaning, the gardening, writing the Christmas cards.

And if he can't manage that, well then maybe he could just tidy up his toys.

THE love of a good woman makes men live longer. Married men who have regular proper meals, a settled life, a comfortable home and someone to care for them tend to be healthier than their single colleagues.

But the research doesn't say what it does for the health of their wives.

INSURANCE companies have worked out that today is the most dangerous day on the roads - there are more accidents than on any other as gloomy weather meets Christmas shopping and festive celebrations, often head on.

Drive carefully.

Just deserts for Jill

JILL Halfpenny, right, jived her way to triumph on Strictly Come Dancing on Saturday Night and the programme had more than a million more viewers than rival X Factor.

Quite right too.

Despite Carol Vorderman's moans, the entrants on SCD were clearly enjoying themselves, working hard, getting fit and actually having fun. Aled Jones lost two stone, Esther Rantzen reckons she found muscles she hadn't known about for over 60 years and has been feeling particularly perky ever since.

And there was the bonus of all the money raised by the phone calls for Children in Need.

Feelgood factor 'v' X Factor. No contest.

Published: 15/12/2004