Fair Game campaign for women in sport

Today, Stylist magazine launches the Fair Game Awards in partnership with adidas and support from the Youth Sport Trust, offering £50,000 in kit and money to female readers' teams and sport's biggest new female individual talents.

There are two Fair Game Award categories: the Readers' Team Awards which aim to provide kit and equipment to amateur women's teams across the UK (anyone in an all-female team regardless of their ability or winning streak can apply) and the Elite Awards which will offer a bursary of £2,000 plus adidas kit to individual female athletes (aged 16 and over) on course to become household sporting names.

In the Readers' Team Awards a shortlist of 10 teams will face a public vote on stylist.co.uk in January while the Elite Awards will see a 25-strong shortlist compiled and judged in partnership with the Youth Sport Trust. The new talent shortlist will then face the scrutiny of an expert panel of judges including former Olympian, Youth Sport Trust's Guin Batten; adidas' UK Marketing Director, Nick Craggs and the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation's CEO, Sue Tibballs.

The awards are part of the magazine's Fair Game for Women in Sport; a campaign which aims to increase coverage of female athletes in the national media and boost participation in sport throughout the UK.

Guin Batten from Youth Sport Trust explains, "We are very excited to be working with Stylist magazine and fully support the need to boost participation in sport, particularly among girls. We're certain that the athletes awarded will be role models to young peers in their community and encourage and inspire more young girls to take part in sport."

Stylist's editor Lisa Smosarski comments, "This is an incredible boost for women's sport in the UK. We promised to increase media coverage of women in sport - a promise that has seen us put Rachel Yankey of Team GB's football team and Jessica Ennis on our cover and provide a voice to countless sports talents over the last eight months - and now along with adidas we are going to change the lives of both our readers' teams and the young women who are set to become household names."

For further information on the awards, visit:  www.stylist.co.uk/fairgame/awards