Lightweight men: taking the hit for gender parity
It was not a decision rowing's governing body FISA really had any control over. At their Extraordinary Congress in Japan this week those in charge of world rowing had to make a decision to scrap at least one men's event in favour of a women's event of equal size for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
The decision has been . . .
Wanted: female coaches
About a year and a half ago I decided to step down from competitive rowing, while remaining connected to the sport through coaching. Since then I've been volunteering as a coach of our novice women's squad, a task which has been time-consuming but immensely rewarding. I'm thoroughly enjoying meeting a new group of women each year . . .
Posted in: coachingequalityrole modelsrowingtennis
A New Year's roundup of sporting inequality
My New Year's resolution? Among other things,to blog here more. Every day I think "that's worth looking at" and never get around to it.
So in honour of that, here's a round-up of some stories and issues which have caught my attention in the last week or so.
Earlier this week the New Statesman . . .
A stroke in the right direction
"Christmas came early!" exclaimed one of my friends on Facebook yesterday, sharing a post from Henley Royal Regatta (HRR) announcing the introduction of three new women's events to their programme. From next year there will be an equal number of men's and women's events at the top or 'open' level of the regatta, . . .
The influence of the Olympics on women's sport
In the run-up to the Rio 2016 Olympics there has been a steady stream of articles looking at issues such as water quality - for rowing, sailing and open-water swimming - and the risk of athletes contracting the Zika virus through mosquito bites.
To date, most of the top male golfers have pulled out of coming to Rio, with many of . . .
The Boat Races
I'm a rower and this is a blog about sport and the coverage of sport, so it would be remiss of me not to write about the Boat Race. Or, to be precise, the Cancer Research Boat Races.
Tomorrow (Easter Sunday, 27 March) is the second year in which both the men and women of Oxford and Cambridge Universities race each other on the . . .
Do women's sports "piggyback" off men's?
This morning the chief executive of the Indian Wells tennis tournament stepped down in response to the reaction to one of the most outrageously sexist interviews I've ever read. Raymond Moore said: “If I was a lady player, I’d go down every night on my knees and thank god that Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal were born because they have . . .
