Advent 16

When writing in this list about John Francome I repeated that old saw about the inadvisability of meeting your heroes. Francome proved it wrong. And so does today's heroine. We encountered Dame Kelly Holmes in the unlikely surroundings of Cheltenham Races and, do you know what, she was lovely. Does that sound patronising? Sorry, but she was, just, really nice.

All she had wanted was to be an Army PTI and only slowly did it dawn on her quite how considerable an athlete she could be. She suffered countless injuries but, as living proof that the good guys/gals do sometimes win, she took double Olympic gold in Athens in 2004. Her sheer unbelieving joy at the first of those victories remains one of sport's great images.