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This year's Olympics in Japan will be very different without fans 鈥� but for Team GB, it will be distinct for another reason.

For the first time in 125 years, more female British athletes than men will be going to the games.

There will be 201 women (well, one is only 13 years old) and 175 men, making up a total of 376 athletes 鈥� the largest ever at a non-home Olympics.

Four of those women will be vying to become the first British female Olympians to win gold medals at three separate summer games.

Cyclist Laura Kenny, taekwondo player Jade Jones, dressage rider Charlotte Dujardin and rower Helen Glover will be hoping to make history in Tokyo after their successes at London in 2012 and Rio in 2016.

Kenny, who has four golds, also has the possibility to match Dame Katherine Grainger's total of five medals if she secures another.

And 13-year-old skateboarder Sky Brown will enter the history books as Team GB's youngest ever athlete at a summer Olympics.

Mark England, Team GB's chef de mission, said: "2021 is truly the year of the female Olympian."

Sky News shines the spotlight on 10 of Team GB's inspirational Olympians.

The double Olympic champion's life has changed quite a bit since Rio, after which she retired then had three children, Logan, nearly three, and twins Bo and Kit, 16 months.

It was lockdown 鈥� and an impressive time on the rowing machine 鈥� that made the 35-year-old choose to come out of retirement to become the first Team GB rower to compete at an Olympics after having children.

On being selected for Tokyo, Glover, from Truro, Cornwall, said it felt "really special and actually quite surreal".

For London and Rio, her place in the team was pretty secure but she said this time was a bit of "an experiment鈥� so this feels like more of a moment".

Glover admitted "every day" it feels like she has bitten off more than she can chew with raising three young children and training.

"Every day comes with its challenges," she told Sky Sports.

"We've always said kids come first. If I can fit the training round them, great."

Glover won golds at London and Rio with Heather Stanning but this time she is in a boat with Polly Swann, who she rowed with at the World Championships in 2013.

She called her new pairing "a bit of a fairy tale" and said although there will not be the usual crowds in Tokyo, she feels "really fortunate" athletes are able to go during the pandemic and said everybody competing "has to be really responsible for their own actions".

Is she going for another gold? Well, after such a whirlwind to selection, Glover says she has not really thought about it and admitted it is quite nerve-racking going up against competitors she will meet for the first time at the Olympics, as the World Championships were cancelled.

The 29-year-old will be competing in her third Olympics and ironically, if it had not been delayed a year by the pandemic, then she would have had to miss out due to a broken shoulder and arm last year.

Since Rio, where she won two golds, Laura Kenny (n茅e Trott) has got married to fellow Team GB cycling champion Jason Kenny and had son Albie, now nearly four.

Winning another medal in Tokyo would put her on par with rower Katherine Grainger's five medal haul but she is trying not to think of that.

"I want to just compete at my best, I'm not thinking about it," she told Sky Sports.

Podcast: Tokyo 2020 and COVID 鈥� are Olympic dreams worth the risk?

Kenny, from Harlow, Essex, is proud there are more women than men in this year's Team GB.

"I think it's for all the generations below us. I think it just gives that extra boost to anyone that might be thinking about dropping out of sport," she said.

"And I think the more female role models we have, the better. I just think it will be a time where there will be more females on the TV at any one time than you'll ever see.

"And that is such a brilliant thing for the younger generation coming through."

Being a mum this time is also very important for Kenny, although Albie will not be coming to Tokyo with the couple due to COVID.

"For me, if I was to have a daughter after Albie, I want her to enjoy sport as much as Albie does now. And I think having these role models to follow is what is going to inspire them to get into it at school."

Kenny remains coy about whether she plans to compete in the next Olympics in 2024, but added: "I have no plans to stop."

At 13-years-old (just), Sky Brown is Team GB's youngest ever Olympian and will be competing in skateboarding's Olympic debut alongside another very young female athlete, Bombette Martin, 15.

Also a pro-surfer, Brown and her younger brother, Ocean, who surfs and skates as well, have a YouTube channel that has racked up more than 54 million views.

Brown's father is British and her mother is Japanese, with the family living in Miyazaki, Japan (for surfing), and Huntington Beach, California (for skating), and in 2019 she won a bronze medal at the World Championships.

Last year, she had a near-fatal skateboarding accident after falling during training in California, fracturing her skull and breaking her left wrist and hand, and was unresponsive when she arrived at hospital after being airlifted by helicopter.

But in true Brown-style (as you will see), she said: "As soon as I got out, I was just super excited to get back on the board.

"I never felt scared because you know, falling is part of life. You're going to fall sometimes but you've got to get back up and do it again, and it actually made me stronger and made me want to go harder."

Brown is competing in the park event where skateboarders take to a hollowed-out course with curves that they climb and perform mid-air tricks from.

The teenager said she has been "really trying to go high" and to work on her style.

"I kind of like to think of it as like a dance, like making a dance routine," Brown, also a keen dancer, said.

Any nerves? "No, not for skateboarding.

"I just want to do my best and see what happens. I don't really get nervous; I just get excited.

"I'm trying my best to get gold."

The 25-year-old sprinter, from Orpington, London, is the fastest British woman in recorded history and in 2015 became the first British woman to officially run 100m in under 11 seconds.

Asher-Smith finished fifth in the 200m at Rio and claimed bronze as part of the 4x100m relay squad and is hoping to become Team GB's first female Olympic champion at both the 100m and 200m in Tokyo.

Rarely seen without a big smile on her face, the athlete has gone from strength to strength since Rio, claiming a historic sprint treble by taking gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay at the 2018 European Athletics Championships 鈥� the first British woman to achieve the feat 鈥� and winning the world 200m title in 2019.

The King's College London history graduate said she is craving the "adrenaline rush" of the Olympics and recently pulled out of the British Grand Prix as a precaution after suffering a tight hamstring.

"I love racing. It is exciting mainly because I love championships, and it is not that I am particularly excited for an outcome - because nobody has a crystal ball, nobody can anticipate what the season is going to be like, what anything is going to be like - but I just love a challenge," she told Sky Sports.

"I am really excited, the thing for me that I always love about sprinting is that it is like an adrenaline rush.

"Everybody can be on Instagram and social media like 'hashtag eat, sleep, repeat, I lifted this today, working so hard, hashtag workout Wednesday'. You can do all that, you can say all that, but when it comes down to that, let's see.

"What are you made of? When the gun goes and when you step up, how much nerve do you have? This is the moment, if it is not now, when? That's what I love about racing."

The two-time Olympic champion is hoping to become the first taekwondo fighter to claim three Olympic titles.

Awarded an MBE and an OBE for her services to the sport, the Welsh 28-year-old was the first British athlete to become an Olympic taekwondo champion in 2012 at the age of 19.

She is nicknamed "The Headhunter" as she prefers to score points from her opponent's head.

Jones turned her garage into a gym over lockdown and said it was frustrating not knowing if the Olympics was going ahead last year but after a back injury that had her in a back brace last February, she said the delay has been "a blessing in disguise".

"I'm really robust and I've not really had any injuries, touch wood," she said.

Jones is in the lightest weight category (featherweight), and has been since she was 17 years old, something she says is "unheard of".

"It's definitely been tougher over the years and I've naturally put on more weight, more muscle, but I've got really good nutritionists and really good health so I just make the best of it that I can."

Competing in a sport that is often male-dominated, Jones is very aware of being a role model to girls and women and said training hard and showing she has put the work in "to reap the rewards" is really important.

That limelight "definitely puts pressure on you", she said, especially after winning golds at two Olympics.

"It's hard because everyone's watching and everyone sits around me to see, 'can you do it? Can she get this third gold?'

"But all I can literally do is my best, I'll give everything I've got and I'll leave everything on the mat and then I can walk away with my head high.

"I think about it [winning gold] and it would just be amazing. I honestly think I wouldn't know what to do because this would kind of be the very best one if I won as the journey's got harder and harder to win each year and staying on top.

"So, to win this one it would just be amazing, definitely the best. I'm almost greedy, I just want to win again."

Tokyo will be the most successful British dressage rider ever's third Olympics, but this time she will be riding a different horse after retiring her champion ride, Valegro, following Rio in 2016.

Dujardin, who became known as "The Girl on the Dancing Horse" after London, already has three Olympic golds and a silver to her name. She is hoping to get two more when she competes in Tokyo in the team dressage, with three other riders, and in the individual as well.

She is taking her reserve horse, Pumpkin (official name: Gio) to Tokyo.

The 36-year-old, from Enfield, London, had been planning on taking Freestyle, who she has been riding for six years and won a bronze with at the World Equestrian Games.

But Dujardin is taking a punt on Pumpkin, a 10-year-old chestnut roan stallion she spotted five years ago while training in California, who she has described as small, but "a powerhouse" and believes he could win gold.

"I'm coming out to another Olympics with a different horse, which was always my goal - not to be known for just riding one horse, to be able to train lots of up and coming horses and to have another wonderful horse to go to another Olympic Games with," she said.

She admits it is difficult leaving Valegro at home but "he is happy, he's retired and I can still ride him".

She thinks Pumpkin "definitely has the potential to win gold" but said Tokyo is "one of those Olympics that none of us knows what's going to happen" as competing has been very limited this year due to COVID.

The heat and humidity of Japan and 24 hours on a plane for the horses is also an issue that is out of their hands and Dujardin said the team have worked out the longer the horses are in a different time zone the worse their jet lag is so they try to make sure the horses are not there too long.

While Dujardin is confident Pumpkin can win gold, can her rider?

"Everyone who knows me knows I'm a real fighter, so yes, absolutely. It would be fantastic to go and win another gold medal but it's also a huge honour just to represent Great Britain at another Olympic Games. Anything can happen."

Both sport climbing and Shauna Coxsey are making their debut in Tokyo, with the climber one of Team GB's leading medal contenders.

The 28-year-old, from Runcorn, Cheshire, started climbing when she was five years old after being inspired by a documentary about French mountaineer Catherine Destivelle who was climbing cliffs in Africa without ropes.

Coxsey quickly became one of the country's most successful competitive climbers, winning every British Bouldering Championships and taking home golds at the 2016 and 2017 IFSC Climbing World Cups.

Sport climbing at the Olympics will involve speed climbing (getting to 15m the fastest with ropes), bouldering (scaling the most fixed routes on a low wall in a certain time without ropes) and lead (trying to get the highest on a more than 15m wall with ropes within six minutes).

Coxsey said being part of the first time sport climbing is featured at the Olympics is "such a privilege".

"As an athlete, it's incredible. But for my sport, it's just a magical time," she told Sky News.

"What would be incredible is to see more athletes coming through, and we already are. I've always been passionate about helping people and about promoting our sport, so I think there's a lot of excitement to come within the sport."

Last year, Coxsey underwent knee surgery and has been struggling with a back issue from the epidural ever since, which she said "was too much" to deal with.

In June, she announced the Olympics would be her final competition, saying there were "many" contributing factors and she made up her mind a while ago.

She plans to give it her all in Tokyo and said this could be the pinnacle of her career.

Her attitude to the pandemic should stand her in good stead for whatever happens in Tokyo, and beyond.

"If I can't do something about it, then I tend to get over it pretty quickly," she said.

"Life has been what it has been, and it's been hard and challenging but I think if you're able to learn something, you can take positives away. I'm like the annoying, positive person that's always like 'we can learn from this, we can move forward'."

The 24-year-old Loughborough University student is the first black female swimmer on Team GB.

She joined the team after finishing fourth out of 47 at a qualifying event in Portugal in June.

"I'm really happy at being the person to break this barrier," she said.

"It's a really exciting moment for myself and for black history and black culture.

"At the same time, it is such a shame it took as long as 2021 to get to this point."

Dearing, from Birmingham, started swimming aged eight and co-founded the Black Swimming Association last year to encourage young swimmers from ethnic minority backgrounds to take part in swimming.

"It has just been decades and decades of historical and cultural racism. I'm really hoping things can start to move forward and people can look at swimming and think it's not just a sport meant for people of a certain race.

"Black people can swim."

Dearing made headlines earlier this month after she spoke out against the ban from the upcoming games of a swimming cap designed by SoulCap for natural black hair because the caps do not fit "the natural form of the head". A review into the use of swimming products for natural black hair is under way.

"The issue with this story is I don't want little black girls and little black boys to look at elite swimming and think it is not open to them because that is completely the wrong idea," she told Sky Sports.

"It is open to them, I really hope that with it being under review that some agreement will come about, I'm sure it will.

"But I don't want people to look at elite level swimming and think: 'It's not open for me, I can't wear my hair the way I want to and I'll go and find another sport', because that's not what we want."

The 19-year-old has had quite the year already, breaking the world under-20 800m record in January then two months later she became the youngest Briton to win a European Indoor gold medal after turning 19 four days before.

Her coach, multiple world and European 800m medallist Jenny Meadows, believes Hodgkinson could beat Dame Kelly Holmes's British 800m record time of 1 minute 65.21 seconds 鈥� held since 1995.

That prediction would be daunting for most but Hodgkinson, from Wigan, told Sky Sports: "I take it as a confidence booster that they have that belief in me.

"Obviously, Kelly Holmes was absolutely incredible. Ever since that record was done鈥� whoever is going to break it is going to take some hard work!

"I just try to take [the comparisons] as an honour.

"I would like to run that quick one day and do what she has done. [Winning] Olympic golds is the majority of athletes' aims."

The runner is in her first year studying criminology at Leeds Beckett University and said it was watching Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill win heptathlon gold at London 2012, when Hodgkinson was aged 10, that influenced her to pursue athletics instead of swimming.

British athletics chief Christian Malcolm urged other Team GB athletes to be as fearless as Hodgkinson and insisted he did not want to rush her to compete in Tokyo.

But the teenager said "it would be silly not to try and aim" for Tokyo, despite what she described as the "absolutely insane" competition across British middle-distance running.

She also hopes her achievements so far prove anything is possible with hard work.

"I would like to be an inspiration to younger people, especially with me being young and showing that age is no barrier."

Already a Youth Olympic and World Youth champion, as well as four-times European Youth champion, 20-year-old Caroline Dubois is eyeing up a senior Olympic title in Tokyo.

There are high hopes for the talented boxer from Enfield, London, who has 35 wins and two losses and was named BBC Young Sports Personality of the Year in 2019.

Dubois is one of 11 children brought up by their father, Dave Dubois, a Camden Market street trader who would fly to New York in the 1980s to sell posters and make a million dollars each trip.

By 1997 he had made enough money to settle down comfortably, bringing up his seven youngest children by himself.

Most of them are boxers, and Caroline is hoping to show the world she is just as talented as older brother, Daniel Dubois, the current WBA interim heavyweight champion who has a 93.75% knockout-to-win percentage.

Both siblings trained at the UK's oldest boxing gym, Repton Boxing Club. Caroline started age nine and pretended, with her father's help, to be a boy called Colin as many top clubs would not allow girls at the time. They did not realise she was a girl for quite a while as she was so good.

Dubois, who has been dreaming of competing in the Olympics since London 2012, is now ready to step out of her brother's shadow.

"I don't feel any added pressure because of my name," she told the Enfield Independent.

"A lot of people recognise my name because of Daniel, but hopefully after the Olympics, it'll be the other way round and people will know him because of me!

"I'm very confident of winning a medal. I believe in my ability and if I prepare properly, have faith in myself and perform to the best of my ability, I'm confident I can beat everyone."

There are several more women hoping to have a medal round their necks on the winners podium - here are 10 more to watch

Laura Muir, 1500m

She is in great form after recording the second fastest time by a British woman in the 800m at the Monaco Diamond League earlier this month, but has decided to focus on the 1500m at Tokyo.

Katerina Johnson-Thompson, heptathlon

Just competing at the Olympics is an achievement for KJT after she ruptured her achilles in December. The 2019 world hepathlon champion has only just returned to competition and would have been a firm favourite - if fully fit.

Seonaid McIntosh, shooting

Shooting is in the blood for this reigning world number one. She is the daughter of a four-times Commonwealth Games medallist, and younger sister of Olympic shooter Jennifer McIntosh. She will be a strong contender in the 50m three positions rifle event, and an outside bet for the 10m air rifle.

Women's hockey team

Team GB's hockey team won gold in Rio, but form has been patchy since then at best. Nine of the 16 strong squad are Olympic debutants.

Mallory Franklin, canoe slalom

The 26-year-old world champion is chasing gold in the first-ever Olympic women's C1, where athletes kneel in a boat and use a single-bladed paddle. Franklin has been called a "pioneer" as the event has faced sexism for years, with women being told they were not strong enough for it.

Hannah Mills, sailing 

Having won gold in Rio, Mills is attempting to become the most successful female sailor in Olympic history by hopefully winning gold when she competes in the women's 470 dinghy with Eilidh McIntyre.

Lauren Price, boxing

The reigning world number one middleweight champion, and Wales's first ever female boxer at the Olympics, is chasing gold. She switched to boxing from football in 2014 and has been winning ever since.

Charlotte Worthington, BMX freestyle

A former chef, Worthington only took up BMX freestyle five years ago but quickly started winning, including a bronze at the 2019 World Championships. She has a real chance of a medal as the sport makes its Olympic debut.

Emma Wilson, windsurfing

The daughter of two-time Olympian Penny Wilson won her first title aged 12 and has continued to win ever since. Expectations are high for the 22-year-old in Tokyo.

Women's football team

Finally - could the football team bring a gold medal home? The Olympics is one of women's football's biggest events and having missed out on gold at London 2012, and not going to Rio, they have high hopes after finishing fourth in the 2019 World Cup - and winner Germany failed to qualify for Tokyo.

Credits:

Words and research: Alix Culbertson, news reporter

Graphic design: Pippa Oakley, designer

Interviews: Tom Parmenter, news correspondent, and Sky Sports