I admit it; I have been completely caught up in Olympic
fever. I realised this on Sunday whilst watching the last hour or so of the Women’s
Road Race. I don´t think I ever realised how incredibly tactical this discipline
was and have only ever paid passing notice to the Tour de France, mainly because
my boyfriend loves it. I also didn´t realise that although it is an individual
event, it is how you work as a team that will determine how well you actually
do. The men´s event was on Saturday and had been incredibly hyped up. Great Britain (trying not to say we, I have done nothing to contribute to the
team, except watch and tweet!) has just won the Tour de France with Bradley
Wiggins, and Mark Cavendish was expected to be amongst the medals in the
Olympics Road Race. Tactically they got it wrong as none of the other countries wanted
Cavendish to sprint off for the last km or so, so no one else put in any work
in the peloton and Great Britain failed to get in the medals. However the
ladies got it right and our first medal of the 2012 Olympics went to Lizzie
Armitstead, a silver, she wasn´t even the favourite in the team after Nicole
Cooke a gold medal winner in the Beijing Road Race in 2008 and Emma Pooley who had got silver in the time trial that
same year, with Lucy Martin making up the team. Can I also add that although the women’s
race is shorter than the men’s, it was in torrential rain for much of it. Not
to mention the fact that Lizzie lost her sunglasses somewhere in Surrey during
the race, which won´t have made it any easier for her.
So the first Team GB medal of the 2012 Olympics went to a
female competitor, as did the second medal, a bronze to Rebecca Adlington in
the 400m freestyle swimming, not bad for someone who had only just snuck into
the final and had tweeted earlier in the day
“Just sneaked into tonights final in 8th place! Not
expecting anything tonight, all I can do is my best :-) thank you for all the
support x”, and showed a huge amount of modesty by doing that. The same happened in Beijing where Nicole
Cooke got gold, and Rebecca Adlington got gold in the 400m freestyle swimming.
We´re only 3 days into the Olympics, I hope there are many
more medals to come from both the male and female members of Team GB. For now though Lizzie
and Rebeccas achievements can also be joined by 18 year old Zoe Smiths new
British record in the 58kg weight lifting category (Google her, the girl is
TINY!!!!) The women’s double sculls (rowing) got a new Olympic record in their
heat, and the equestrian eventing team are doing very well and that’s a team of four women and one man.
The Olympics is one of the few times that men and women’s
sports are shown equally. I found out that women’s sports as a whole only gets
5% of sports media coverage, which explains why it only gets 0.5% of the
sponsorship. If you don´t get sponsorship it can be incredibly expensive to
just train for your sport, not to mention buying any equipment and travelling
to events.
The lack of media coverage can also be blamed for the fact that the 2011 BBC Sports personality of the year failed to have a single female sportsperson nominated for the award despite the success of ironman world champion Chrissie Wellinton, open water swimmer Keri-Anne Payne, and word champion Rebecca Adlington. The Manchester Evening News even nominated three, very well paid footballers, Dimitar Berbatov, Yaya Toure and Patrick Vieira and not one of them is British, now thats a slap in the face for anyone.
Something else that caught my eye today was a petition that
is trying to get the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to
present the gold medal to both the winner of the men's marathon and of the
women's marathon, its currently only the men´s marathon winner that has his
presented by the president. Becoming a top performer in any sport, male or female, takes
years of dedication, sacrifice and sheer hard work. It has nothing to do with
your gender; it is your desire to be the best that you can be. By doing
something as simple as getting someone other than the President of the IOC to
present the medal to the female marathon winner suggests that women’s sport
is not as important. It is, and maybe more so as a recent study showed only 31%
of 14-year-old girls said they exercised regularly, compared with 50% of
14-year-old boys.
These girls need to see that sport is important, there are
some very good role models but they have to search them out or get them
presented to them during something like the Olympics. You hope that Rebecca
Adlington is already a household name after Beijing and I hope that Lizzie
Armitstead follows suit. They are just not as accessible as male
athletes. You could ask 20 children aged 14 to name a player in the Men’s
football team at the Olympics, and you´d get them piping up with at least 3
names, but I can almost guarantee they couldn´t even tell you who the coach of
the Women’s football team was. Hope Powell for anyone that’s interested and
she´s been a coach of the England team since 1998, please tell me a men’s
international football coach that has lasted this long.
Please don´t think that women’s sport is not as high profile
because our female athletes and sportswomen are not as successful, because they
are. The England’s women´s football team has made the quarter final of the
World Cup the last two times and were runners up in the European championships
in 2009. The very well paid fully professional England men’s football team have
never come runners up in any tournament and have only won the World Cup once in
1966. The women’s cricket team won the World Cup in 2009, made the semis in 2005
and won the European tournament in both 2007 and 2005. More recently the
England women’s netball team, a sport that ALL girls play at school won the
World Netball Series in 2011, made even more remarkable that the team is
non-professional and the players all have jobs. Not to mention the numerous individual achievements across the board. I can´t imagine there are many school age kids that know that England are World Series Champions in Netball, I admit I only know it
because I saw it as a photograph in one of the broadsheets. Imagine what a
difference it would make if they did, what an inspiration they could be and how it would be a positive ambition for a 14 year old girl.
These women prove that they REALLY want to win, they want
the prestige of winning, they don´t get huge salaries on which to become
apathetic and abusive (John Terry, I´m looking at you). They have to win, or
nearly win, it’s the only way they get any sort of sponsorship and funding.
Just as an aside, one thing I have noticed living in Norway is that their top female skiers and the Women´s handball team are as high profile as the Men´s and do seem to get similar levels of media coverage. This can´t be said for all sports here, but it is encouraging that in the first quarter of 2006 cross country skier Marit Bjørgen was the second most covered person in Norwegian media, surpassed only by the Norwegian Prime Minister. It may explain why there is a higher percentage of girls practicing and continuing with sports and why teenage obesity levels are not even something to worry about here.
They are calling this London 2012 Olympics the Women’s
Olympics, because this is the first time that EVERY nation has a female
competitor, yes even Saudi Arabia managed to enter two, and women are competing
in EVERY sport with the introduction of women’s boxing. Finally, women make up
45% of the competitors, the highest percentage ever.
It really is about time that women’s sport got as much
coverage as men’s. I want to hear a young girl say that when she grows up she
wants to be the next Victoria Pendleton, Kelly Holmes, Lizzie Armitstead, or Jennifer
Ennis rather than just famous like one of the girls out of TOWIE (seriously
when did we let normal untalented people become famous?). These sporting
figures are the role models that young girls need and the only way that will
happen is with increased profile and reward.
So support Team GB just make sure you support the women’s
sports as much as the men’s. It may not be as fast, which is often the argument used by why Women´s football is not as popular as Mens, but I can guarantee you its
as exciting and skilled, if not more so. These positive role models are the key in promoting
strong and healthy over skinny and the benefits of exercise opposed to chasing
boys and eating chocolate.
Thanks to my friend IP for the title quote.
If you´re interested in learning more go to http://wsff.org.uk/ Women’s sport and fitness
foundation.
Don´t forget to follow: @BeckAdlington, @L_ArmiTstead
@damekellyholmes @v_pendleton and @wsff_uk
Oh and sign this whilst you´re online http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/IOC_President_should_present_the_gold_medal_to_the_womens_marathon_winner/?cUCkfdb
Photo credits, Lizzie Armitstead and medal PA (The Telegraph), England Women´s Netball team http://www.heruni.com/just-try-england-netball-team-encourage-women-to-try-sport/
