the word “man” has generally been used roughly three times as much as the word “woman” in sports-related coverage, despite the fact that women make up some 45 percent of athletes competing.
.. female athletes received 58.5 percent of prime-time media coverage during the first half of the Games, compared with 41.5 percent for men.
.. The increased media coverage might be the reason for the increased scrutiny on why the words used to describe the women are still very different from those used to describe their male counterparts.
“We found things like men being described as fastest, strong, biggest,” Ms. Grieves said. “For women, it’s unmarried, married, references to their age.
.. Mr. Inverdale mentioned that Murray was the first person ever to win two Olympic tennis gold medals. Murray corrected him by citing the Williams sisters: “I think Venus and Serena have won about four each.”
.. journalists who are brought out every two years to cover women’s Olympic sports are out of practice because of the general lack of prime-time demand for sports that feature women: “It’s like asking an athlete to go on a field and demonstrate technique without practicing.”
Gymnastics, Ideal Girls, and the Signal of Makeup
It’s worth noting here that gymnastics is one of the few sports where, absent a gender modifier, the athlete is presumed to be female.
.. I did notice that she didn’t put her hand over her heart during the national anthem; I did notice that she wasn’t visibly rushing to congratulate teammates who had fared better than she in these Olympics. I didn’t draw conclusions about Douglas or her character by it, but I noticed. And the reason I noticed was because she was different than the other competitors. More reserved, less bubbly. More observant, less indulgent. More—forgive me, but this is the word that comes to mind—womanly, less girlish
.. I don’t think Gabby Douglas would be facing this vitriol were she, say, a track and field competitor. It’s the image of the contemporary gymnast that’s at issue here, and to me, that’s where the makeup comes in too.
.. Makeup in the realm of gymnastics doesn’t just “soften” the incredible athletic power of American gymnasts, though. It reinforces their girlish, bubbly image
.. If we truly required all our female athletes to use makeup as an apology for their strength, shot putters would “need” that styling even more than gymnasts because of their incredible power and heft.
.. The expectation of feminine expression is different for each type of sport, and that expression remains even when makeup is taken out of the equation. Douglas’s looks didn’t escape rebuke, of course, but those who vilified her primarily did so because she didn’t behave like the ideal girl.
.. I mean, here they are, competing against one another for something they’ve been dreaming about since second grade, and you tell me they’re always full sweetness and support?
We Are Nowhere Close to the Limits of Athletic Performance
Genetic engineering will bring us new Bolts and Shaqs.
the potential improvements achievable by doping effort are relatively modest. In weightlifting, for example, Mike Israetel, a professor of exercise science at Temple University, has estimated that doping increases weightlifting scores by about 5 to 10 percent. Compare that to the progression in world record bench press weights: 361 pounds in 1898, 363 pounds in 1916, 500 pounds in 1953, 600 pounds in 1967, 667 pounds in 1984, and 730 pounds in 2015. Doping is enough to win any given competition, but it does not stand up against the long-term trend of improving performance that is driven, in part, by genetic outliers.
.. The genomics researcher George Church maintains a list of some of these single mutations. They include a variant of LRP5 that leads to extra-strong bones, a variant of MSTN that produces extra lean muscle, and a variant of SCN9A that is associated with pain insensitivity.4
The solution to doping is to extend the blame beyond athletes
We can start with the idea that athletes should not be the only ones held to account (in the sense of liability) for doping. In practice, this means changing WADA’s system of strict liability for the athlete. To do so, we first need a stakeholder analysis to understand who the relevant stakeholders are for each team, athlete or sport. WADA could require teams or individual athletes and their entourages to submit something akin to a classic organisational chart, showing who reports to whom, who pays whom, and who makes decisions for whom.
The next step would be to assign liability to the appropriate stakeholder(s). Here, we think that the individuals identified through the stakeholder analysis as possessing the most power or control over the ‘organisation’ should be held personally liable for the doping of the athlete(s) under their control. In some cases, the organisations themselves will have corporate responsibility.