Women in Sport - a series of interviews
The ten women pictured above are some of the finest athletes to have graced the sporting arena during my lifetime - yet I'd gladly wager that without the use of a search engine, very few would be able to name more than, let's say six...
Yet between them, they have won countless Olympic medals, championships, and titles, displaying the kind of dedication, skill, determination, and bravery that is beyond anything I can imagine, let alone could ever have achieved. I have enjoyed playing (to the best of my limited ability) and watching sport for as long as I can remember; and have been incredibly fortunate to have met some amazing and inspiring athletes as part of my attempts to raise mental health awareness over the past few years. I even had the chance to "challenge" (a definite misnomer) some of them at the the sports in which they excel and whether it be badminton, table tennis, swimming, darts, cricket or even a very brief excursion into a boxing ring; it's fair to say my efforts ranged from distinctly average to embarrassingly bad - but every experience gave me memories to treasure ... well perhaps apart from the boxing!
I do struggle to understand why the coverage of women's sport, be that on television or old-fashioned column inches, is so significantly less than for its respective male equivalents - rather I understand the reasons ... I just don't agree with them. I'm about as good at debating as throwing a left jab, but it does seem that as well as the disparity in sponsorship, participation, coverage and viewing figures there are some gender or cultural differences that are simply impossible to reconcile. As an example arguably the world's greatest footballer and 2018 Ballon D'Or winner Lionel Messi supposedly earned 100 times as much as his female counterpart Ada Hegerberg, but whilst he was lauded on receipt of his award, she was asked to perform a demeaning dance for the crowd by the event host. Yes, it's only one example, but if such discrimination happens at the very top of the most popular game in the world, chances are it's replicated to some extent right across the sporting spectrum.
For me, the whole argument is simple - being able to watch athletes who have worked so hard to be the very best they can be is a privilege ... the gender or colour of the participant(s), or the actual sport for that matter are irrelevant. I realise that my opinion has little resonance, but I was willing to attempt well over 100 "challenges" in the hope that one person might find the strength to talk about their mental health, or ask for help ... so why can't I ask a number of female athletes to share their story? From Olympic gold medallists to youngsters striving for sporting excellence, everyone has a story to tell. Of course I'm interested in the mental or psychological side of sport, not just the strength required to produce when it really matters, but also how female athletes deal with the hardships and barriers they may encounter.
If you don't recognise the lady top left in the picture, she is Mary Rand, Britain's first ever track and field gold medallist (she won long jump gold in 1964). Mary won three medals at those Tokyo games - still a record for any British female athlete - and did so despite receiving no funding, no sponsorship, working full-time ... and being a mother. She wasn't just a gifted pentathlete, she was outstanding at pretty much any game or sport she tried; swimming, hockey, rounders, they all came naturally to Mary Rand, who is quite probably the greatest athlete this country has ever seen - notice the removal of the word "female".
Mary's Tokyo room mate, Ann Packer, won the 800 metres a few days later (a wonderful story and a fantastic race). Interestingly, the two-lap distance was only introduced into the women's Olympic programme in 1928 because of ... wait for it; medical fears that women were too "delicate" for competitive distance running, and such intense effort could be damaging to reproductive functions.
Worse still, with Games administrators and the press having decided that women were too frail to run as far as 800m, reporters fabricated the truth to such an extent that the event would not be included again until the Rome Olympics in 1960. One "leading sportswriter" commented that of the 11 competitors in the final, five dropped out before the finish and five others collapsed after crossing the line. Thankfully technology was such that still and moving images proved that there were only nine women in the line-up and all nine (including the winner Lina Radke of Germany) finished the race...
I shall end with the hope that over the next 12 months, I can bring you some interesting, inspiring and challenging inter-views; but for now, I am going to close by providing the names to these illustrious faces (left-right, top row first): Mary Rand, Kate Richardson-Walsh, Dawn Fraser, Amanda Nunes, Karla Pretorius, Ellyse Perry (how many men have scored a test cricket double century and a goal in a World Cup quarter-final?!), Rochelle Clark, Vreni Schneider, the truly remarkable Vera Caslavska (click the link) and Steffi Graf.
Yet between them, they have won countless Olympic medals, championships, and titles, displaying the kind of dedication, skill, determination, and bravery that is beyond anything I can imagine, let alone could ever have achieved. I have enjoyed playing (to the best of my limited ability) and watching sport for as long as I can remember; and have been incredibly fortunate to have met some amazing and inspiring athletes as part of my attempts to raise mental health awareness over the past few years. I even had the chance to "challenge" (a definite misnomer) some of them at the the sports in which they excel and whether it be badminton, table tennis, swimming, darts, cricket or even a very brief excursion into a boxing ring; it's fair to say my efforts ranged from distinctly average to embarrassingly bad - but every experience gave me memories to treasure ... well perhaps apart from the boxing!
I do struggle to understand why the coverage of women's sport, be that on television or old-fashioned column inches, is so significantly less than for its respective male equivalents - rather I understand the reasons ... I just don't agree with them. I'm about as good at debating as throwing a left jab, but it does seem that as well as the disparity in sponsorship, participation, coverage and viewing figures there are some gender or cultural differences that are simply impossible to reconcile. As an example arguably the world's greatest footballer and 2018 Ballon D'Or winner Lionel Messi supposedly earned 100 times as much as his female counterpart Ada Hegerberg, but whilst he was lauded on receipt of his award, she was asked to perform a demeaning dance for the crowd by the event host. Yes, it's only one example, but if such discrimination happens at the very top of the most popular game in the world, chances are it's replicated to some extent right across the sporting spectrum.
For me, the whole argument is simple - being able to watch athletes who have worked so hard to be the very best they can be is a privilege ... the gender or colour of the participant(s), or the actual sport for that matter are irrelevant. I realise that my opinion has little resonance, but I was willing to attempt well over 100 "challenges" in the hope that one person might find the strength to talk about their mental health, or ask for help ... so why can't I ask a number of female athletes to share their story? From Olympic gold medallists to youngsters striving for sporting excellence, everyone has a story to tell. Of course I'm interested in the mental or psychological side of sport, not just the strength required to produce when it really matters, but also how female athletes deal with the hardships and barriers they may encounter.
If you don't recognise the lady top left in the picture, she is Mary Rand, Britain's first ever track and field gold medallist (she won long jump gold in 1964). Mary won three medals at those Tokyo games - still a record for any British female athlete - and did so despite receiving no funding, no sponsorship, working full-time ... and being a mother. She wasn't just a gifted pentathlete, she was outstanding at pretty much any game or sport she tried; swimming, hockey, rounders, they all came naturally to Mary Rand, who is quite probably the greatest athlete this country has ever seen - notice the removal of the word "female".
Mary's Tokyo room mate, Ann Packer, won the 800 metres a few days later (a wonderful story and a fantastic race). Interestingly, the two-lap distance was only introduced into the women's Olympic programme in 1928 because of ... wait for it; medical fears that women were too "delicate" for competitive distance running, and such intense effort could be damaging to reproductive functions.
Worse still, with Games administrators and the press having decided that women were too frail to run as far as 800m, reporters fabricated the truth to such an extent that the event would not be included again until the Rome Olympics in 1960. One "leading sportswriter" commented that of the 11 competitors in the final, five dropped out before the finish and five others collapsed after crossing the line. Thankfully technology was such that still and moving images proved that there were only nine women in the line-up and all nine (including the winner Lina Radke of Germany) finished the race...
I shall end with the hope that over the next 12 months, I can bring you some interesting, inspiring and challenging inter-views; but for now, I am going to close by providing the names to these illustrious faces (left-right, top row first): Mary Rand, Kate Richardson-Walsh, Dawn Fraser, Amanda Nunes, Karla Pretorius, Ellyse Perry (how many men have scored a test cricket double century and a goal in a World Cup quarter-final?!), Rochelle Clark, Vreni Schneider, the truly remarkable Vera Caslavska (click the link) and Steffi Graf.