At 16 I was still being called Sonny, because people thought I was a boy.
I lived in a tracksuit because I was a sprinter and I had cropped short hair. My nickname at school was Muscle Man. It was awful, I didn’t enjoy that nickname. I was passionately engaged in piano playing and music, but I was a 100m sprinter and that was my focus. I’d been spotted by a sprint coach at the age of eight.
I just missed qualifying for the Munich Olympics when I was 16 and I was preparing for Montreal in 1976. Like most teenagers, I thought I was indestructible. A call came through out of the blue from Reading Ladies FC [then Reading Royals LFC] wanting me to stand in for their striker, who was injured. They knew I was fast because I ran for Berkshire. And they knew I had brothers who were
