Olympia gives the fans what they want: more women’s sport

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The Olympic rings. Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock

Olympic canoeing is an unlikely guiding star for the state of the Games. Although it’s been part of the Summer Olympics since 1936, the sport isn’t as popular as its preppy cousin, rowing, and it doesn’t tend to spawn prime-time stars like swimming and gymnastics.

Unless Nevin Harrison has something to say about it.

The 19-year-old world champion, one of the supernaturally talented Gen Zers who traveled to Tokyo, is poised to become possibly the first American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in canoeing or kayaking. But despite the long history of canoeing at the Summer Games, she’ll be competing in a brand new Olympic event: the women’s 200-meter canoeing individual. It is one of three women’s events that have existed added in the typically male-dominated canoe section – and this comes at the expense of three men’s events, in line with the IOC’s goal of achieving 50 percent women’s participation in the Games by 2020.

But with all the grumbling about “marketing and politics” opponents of eliminating a handful of male canoe and kayak events to reach the benchmark, the influx of female competitors this year is hardly an example of lively tokenism. The Olympics only give fans what they want: more female athletes to be seen competing.

Nearly 50 years after Title IX was passed, more women are exercising in the United States than ever. Coverage of women’s sports has not kept pace, however: “Women’s sports get the same coverage it received in the 1980s,” found a Purdue study earlier this year – that’s about 5.4 percent of total airtime, or 3.5 percent once the Women’s World Cup is factored out. But while there is a common misconception that women’s sports aren’t that “elite” or “exciting” because of physical strength limitations, “the media creates as much demand as it meets,” said Cheryl Cooky, one of the Perdue- Studies authors. As Cooky further pointed out The Atlantic In 2015, men’s sports appear even more exciting because “they have higher production values, higher quality reporting and higher quality comments … If you watch women’s sports and there are fewer camera angles, fewer cuts to the shot, fewer immediate repetitions, yes, it becomes a slower game seem to be, [and] it seems less exciting. “

But there is obviously an interest in women’s sports, even if it is not directly addressed on the American sports pages. Over the past year, women’s sports have adapted extremely well to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the National Women’s Soccer League being the first professional sport to return after the shutdown. While cynics might argue that the league’s 500 percent increase in viewership was due to nothing else going on, the “record-breaking growth” in interest in women’s sports carried over through 2021, reports NorthJersey.com, noting that the last Monthly more people have watched Game 2 of the Women’s College World Series than the Islanders-Bruins NHL playoff game on NBCSN on the same day.

The international stage has long been one of the best ways for women athletes to secure TV time and especially the Olympic Games in the US. But the IOC’s deliberate effort to increase the participation of women in the Summer Games – 48.8 percent of the field in Tokyo will be women, up from 45 percent in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio and 2.2 percent in the 1900 Olympic Games, in the first year women became loud The New York Times – is more of a game of catching up than a driver for significant change. “Historically, the boost the Olympics and all major sporting events have given to interest and coverage of women has not resulted in lasting change,” Olga Harvey, chief strategy and impact officer at the Women’s Sports Foundation, told the Times.

So while issues of broadcast parity and interest in women’s sports are undoubtedly linked, the IOC’s drive to add more women’s sports as well as mixed-sex competitions seems more overdue than anything else. Sports like BMX freestyle park biking, surfing, and skateboarding haven’t been male dominated in years, and equal numbers of male and female competitors is a no-brainer, not the radical feminist proposition that may appear in the 1990s. Look no further than the canoe competitors who have stormed into the courses opened by the International Canoe Federation – and the fans who are already screaming to watch them compete.

Progress is progress, and fans watching at home will be rewarded with the IOC’s adjustments to programming. Not so long ago there were giggles at the thought of female canoeists; now it’s a matter of course like everything else. “Everyone wants to be an Olympian,” Harrison said The Associated Press. And overdue or not, she will attend the first games, which it seems everyone can finally be at.

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