Nick Westby: Time to revel in some White Rose pride over four homegrown stars

Jessica Ennis-Hill and Lizzie Armitstead should be celebrated from Rotherham to Redcar for all they have accomplished this year.

British world champions of any gender, in any sport, are rare enough, so to have two from this county who can currently call themselves the best in the world at what they do, is no mean feat.

And in a month’s time we might be celebrating a third.

Hannah Cockroft competes over three distances at the IPC world championships in Doha in November.

Given her track record, you would not be surprised if she added further world titles to a trophy cabinet that is already straining at the hinges.

Hurricane Hannah may have been beaten last week in London, but to someone as driven as the 23-year-old from Halifax, that wake-up call will be exactly that, a timely reminder to re-double her efforts.

Prior to that shock defeat, Cockroft had been unbeaten for 300 races in the T34 category. Three hundred. No question Cockroft is the world’s best.

And so too are Ennis-Hill and Armitstead, both in glorious circumstances.

Ennis-Hill’s second world title triumph in Beijing in August has to represent one of the greatest comebacks in sport.

After winning everything in that dominant period from Berlin in 2009 up to Super Saturday in the Olympic Stadium in London three years later, Ennis-Hill could have been forgiven for hanging up the spikes.

And let’s face it, for the next two years it looked like she would; injuries, marriage and giving birth to her first child.

But to come back into training last winter and within a year reclaim top spot on the podium is a remarkable sporting achievement, one that will not be bettered throughout 2015.

Lewis Hamilton’s surge to the Formula 1 world title is not comparable. His achievement is of the mind and of instinct, but is aided enormously by technology.

Chris Froome’s Tour de France triumph comes close but the sporting world still looks upon cycling’s champions with scepticism.

Ennis-Hill reclaimed her position in global sport 13 months after giving birth.

Finding time to sit down and have a meal is hard enough in the early months of parenthood, so going up to Toni Minichiello and saying ‘let’s take on the world again and show ‘em who’s boss’ is unthinkable.

Yet Ennis-Hill showed that hunger, that determination to prove she could rise again.

Armitstead’s journey has not had the ups and downs of Ennis-Hill’s.

Like the heptathlete from Sheffield, Armitstead was discovered by a keen-eyed talent spotter in her teens and has been transformed into a world beater through her own dedication to be the best and the environment around her at sporting schools like British Cycling.

Her rise to the top has been an almost-constant upward trajectory, with track world titles and national road championships leading into an Olympic silver medal in 2012, Commonwealth gold last year, two World Cup seasons as the planet’s best and then ultimately her ride into the arms of the rainbow jersey in Richmond, Virginia, last Saturday.

What she does not possess is the national profile of Ennis-Hill, who has long since been the darling of British athletics.

Women’s cycling has been the domain of Victoria Pendleton for nearly a decade, even though she has already switched saddles and is pursuing a career as a jockey.

If Armitstead wants it, the role of the face of women’s cycling is hers for the taking.

But when it comes to sporting achievements, there is no question she reigns like Ennis-Hill. What separates the two is that Ennis-Hill competes against 36 other athletes in a heptathlon whereas Armitstead has to negotiate her bike to the front of a peloton containing in excess of 120 other cyclists.

Not that that suggests one achievement is better than the other.

The only certainty is that these two daughters of Yorkshire are among the finest sporting role models the country possesses.

They are a prime example of what hard work and dedication can achieve.

Women’s sport is on the rise. Participation is increasing and the exposure that team sports gets is now on a par with what individuals receive when they pursue tennis or Olympic disciplines.

The twin achievements of Ennis-Hill and Armitstead can only enhance that boom in interest.

The same can be said of Cockroft, who is an ambassador not only for women’s sport, but also Paralympic sports, regardless of gender.

One Yorkshirewoman we haven’t mentioned yet is Nicola Adams. The world title is the only accolade missing from her groundbreaking career.

Already she is Olympic, Commonwealth and European champion, and even this year continued her pioneering trailblazing by becoming the first women’s champion in the inaugural European Games.

There is no greater role model for women in boxing than Adams.

And encouragingly, it can, and likely will, only get better for Yorkshire’s quartet of superwomen in 2016.

The Rio Olympics will be a time and a place where all four are likely to rubber-stamp their status as British sporting greats.

Ennis-Hill, back on top of the world, has already laid down a marker to the rest of the heptathlon world with her peerless performance in China in August.

Armitstead has been a perennial challenger on the world stage for years without ever winning the big one, but now she has, she has proven to the rest of the world that she is the cyclist to beat in Brazil next year.

From the moment she stopped celebrating her gold medal in the Excel Arena at London 2012, Adams has targeted Rio as the place where she will back up her claim to be the greatest female boxer of all time.

And a month or so later in the Paralympic Games, Cockroft will undoubtedly show her rivals a clean pair of wheels and charge to victory again.

Who knows what women will emerge between now and then to share some of the limelight; girls who have been inspired and energised by Yorkshire’s star performers.

What is certain is that this quartet should be embraced and applauded.

There might be a time when this country, or county, is starved of success; when the money being invested in sport does not yield the requisite results and we look back on this golden era for women’s sport and think those were the days when our homegrown heroines really made us proud.