Who are your role models?

As a bodybuilder I always looked up to certain bodybuilders as role models, and I still do today. I pick out physiques that I think look the best and the personalities of the some of the bodybuilders that match their physique in awesomeness and I look up to them.

I was wondering which female athletes many of you look up to, admire, or which ones stand out with their awesome body or personality?

There are a number of female bodybuilding and fitness athletes I admire and look up to, but I'm looking to hear from the rest of you.

Who do you think is awesome when it comes to female athletes?

-robert

Body: Denise Paglia

(i think that is how you spell it)?

Not really 'fitness athletes' as such but all the below have incredible fitness:

I have great respect for Paula Radcliffe, the English marathon runner. She trains incredibly hard and is very disciplined and dedicated. I am pleased to see her doing so well in the marathon after her disappointments on the track, where she would lead a race from the front until the final lap until African runners pipped her to the medals.

I also admire Kelly Holmes who overcame years of serious injuries to win double gold at the Athens Olympics last year.

I am also a big fan of Merlene Ottey - into her mid-forties and still going strong. Bizarrely she now runs for Slovenia.

Ditto, Gail Devers, still very competitive despite having a quite serious disease I believe.

I like my track and field in case you hadn't noticed.

stevie williams.

I admire Josefa Idem, a canoeist. She's from Germany but has lived and competed for Italy since 1990. She's won countless medals at world championships and olimpics in the kayak and won silver at the last olimpics at the age of 40. This counts even more as she had a baby in 2003!

A great athlete and really humble person she said that "sport is not much sacrifice, sacrifice is going hungry or not having a shelter, sport is all about commitment".

How could I have forgot Carolina Kluft, the awesome Swedish heptathlete. She is a world class long jumper in her own right as well.

Track and field is only one of the many sports she could of pursued professionally. She has already achieved so much, and she is still only about 22 years old. Only a matter of time before she breaks the world record.

She is a great person - she is very ecologically aware as well if I remember interviews I have read correctly.