Sochi 2014 has been a controversial Olympics – human rights abuses, terrorist threats, allegations of corruption, and an overspend of billions, to name but a few of the issues that has plagued the 24th Winter Olympic games. But if one good thing has come out of it, it’s that British female athletes have proved to the UK and to the world they are at the top of their game.
Team GB has matched its best ever medal haul in the Winter Olympics, and three out of our four medals were won by women. And in my opinion, best of all – being an avid snowboarder – our first ever medal on snow was won by a female snowboarder.
Three weeks ago, barely anyone outside the world of winter sports knew who Jenny Jones, Lizzy Yarnald, and the women’s curling team skip, Eve Muirhead, were – now they are have become household names.
This is great news for women in sport – especially for women in winter sports. These young women have shown that when given the right funding, training, and opportunity, they can bring in the medals just as much as the men can.
Jenny Jones is, I believe, especially inspirational. Coming from a normal family, and only learning to snowboard at the age of 17, she has grafted her way up to that medal podium. Jenny has worked as a chalet girl, in factories, and in restaurants – she took any job that would pay for her to carry on snowboarding, proving that snow sports are not the preserve of the rich (see the below video for her full story).
These medal victories have also come at a time fewer girls are getting into sport, and even our own sports minister, Helen Grant, has said that we should be encouraging girls to do more feminine spots where they can “look absolutely radiant.”
According to Helen these sport are cheerleading, ballet, gymnastics, and roller-skating. There is of course nothing wrong with doing these sports. The women that compete are talented, work hard, and their skills should be applauded – and whether or not they look radiant should not really come in to it.
Girls should be encouraged to do whatever sport they want to do, whether that is football, ballet, snowboarding, or ice dancing, and it should be considered normal for them to do it. Girls are not one-dimensional beings. A girl can be a snowboarder and can wear make-up (I wear a little bit of make-up when I hit the mountain). A girl can be a football player and have her nails painted pink, because being into ‘girly’ things does not change the talent an athlete has nor diminishes the love they have for a sport, whether they are a professional or a do it on a recreational level.
I was reminded of this when I was snowboarding a few days ago. In the lift queue four teenage Canadian girls were ahead of me. They were discussing a party they were going to that evening and what they would wear. The conversation then went onto which run should they take next – the group was divided between a black run called Devil’s Advocate and blue, called Heavens Sake. These girls do not see sport and ‘feminine’ topics as mutually exclusive.
The most important thing is that girls see women participate in sports on a high level and see them achieve, and have their achievements recognised for their skill – and not have them diminished if they are not considered feminine or pretty enough. If young girls can see women achieve in sports, they will think they can do that too.
