This woman took on the 'sexist' BBC and won

Sophie Radcliffe has scaled mountains, completed the Iron Man twice and has even cycled from London to Paris is just 24 hours - but has just claimed victory over arguably her toughest opponent yet: the BBC.

The adventurer had applied to be part of the upcoming show World’s Toughest Army on BBC2 but had her application rejected almost immediately because she was a woman.

She told i100.co.uk: “The email to my application came back literally four or five minutes after I’d applied.” It read: “Unfortunately, the application is only open to men currently as it is in keeping with the selection criteria of the special forces we will be featuring in the series.”

Sophie was flabbergasted by the response. She told us: “I tried to get my head around it. I’d read the application a number of times - it was explicit that no-one could apply with a military background and the criteria for selection would be on location, age, mental resilience and things like that - but there was zero mention of sex or gender.”

It was almost like they didn’t expect women to apply - like it was assumed that they wouldn’t.

• Sophie Radcliffe