Women’s sport full of Kate Sheppards
On a day when Kate Sheppard was celebrated for her long struggle to win New Zealand women the vote, let’s consider those who paved the way for women in sport.
I’m hoping my own mansplaining will be offset by four decades of sports reporting and a longer obsession with sporting history, to least allow one perspective on what female athletes went through to get women’s sport where it is now, even if it remains short of the desired destination.
Women have had to battle hard to even compete – on the track, there was no women’s Olympic blue riband 1500 metres until 1972, no 5000m until 1996, the women’s marathon first arrived in 1984.
Why? Let’s sheet that back to the women’s 800m in 1928, which prompted the IOC and the media to decide women were too frail to compete in a race as long as 800m.
Reports from the 1928 Games not only distorted the results of that race, and fabricated facts to support their viewpoint. As a result, the race was dropped until 1956.
Oh, and sorry women, no Olympic shot put until 1948, no pole vault until 2000. So Valerie Adams and Eliza Mccartney would simply have had to find something else to do.
In swimming, the women’s 1500m freestyle – in which Kiwi Lauren Boyle set a world short course record – will be added at Tokyo in 2020. Men have had one since 1908 (when women had only archery, tennis and figure skating).
Olympic athletics and gymnastics became open to women’s only in 1928, canoeing in 1948, equestrian in 1952, rowing in 1976, all New Zealand women now excel in.
And there could have been no women’s Black Sticks until 1980, and New Zealand Hockey boycotted those Moscow games anyway. Women got shooting and cycling in 1984.
Sportswomen have had to wait, and wait, and wait. And when professionalism arrived, inevitably it arrived later than it did for men. Rugby’s Black Ferns first played in 1989, going professional this year, three decades on.
Those who preceded professionalism laid the way for others – 1952 Olympic long jump champion Yvette Williams would have been a mighty heptathlete, had such an event existed. She won the long jump and was second in the javelin at the 1950 Empire Games, and at Helsinki 10th in the Olympic discus and sixth in the shot put.
Olympic shot putter Val Young might have beaten Adams to the podium in 1964, she was fourth.
Squash world champion Susan Devoy went on ahead, cyclist Karen Holliday won a world cycling title, jockey Linda Jones fought and fought to be a raceday rider, now women win jockey premierships.
When Jones applied for an apprentice licence, she was turned down – among the reasons given, she was married, too old (at 24), not strong enough and would take work off male jockeys. After getting a riding licence to saddle up alongside men, she finished second in the premiership.
Across other sports at the time, there were others just like Linda Jones. Women fighting for the chance to prove themselves. They were forthright, they were tough, their time had come.
Tops in this book was triathlete Erin Baker. Seemingly made of steel, she was strongwilled and wise.
Baker was a two-time Ironman women’s world champion, winning the title in 1987 and 1990 in Hawaii.
She won 104 of the 121 races she entered during her professional career, but there was much more to her than just results. Don’t ask her a patronising question, just don’t.
After years of women being ‘‘protected’’ from the exertions of long running races, having no 1500m in the Olympic pool, there was Baker swimming 3.86km, bounding into a 180km cycle in the tropical heat, then running a marathon to finish. She did more than most to evaporate thoughts of women being the weaker sex.
And there was Allison Roe – winning the Boston and New York Marathons in the same year, 1981 – Anne Audain coming back from having deformed feet as a child to set a 5000m world record on the track, then take the US road running circuit by storm; Lorraine Moller winning Olympic marathon bronze – a rare defeat as she had won her first eight marathons.
Even netball, or women’s basketball as it was known until 1970, took decades for its popularity to really take hold. Netball was seen as an acceptable game for girls because it was less aggressive and more graceful than basketball. And men didn’t play it. In the 1960s and 70s, glamorous players such as shooter Joan Harnett, wise leaders such as Lois Muir, canny administrators and the advent of TV pushed netball and its players into the limelight.
By the 1980s Netball New Zealand had hired a marketing company to try and grab the women’s market, and Muir coached New Zealand to victory in the 1987 World Championships. Netballers such as Rita Fatialofa, Wai Taumaunu, Sandra Edge and Muir herself became public figures.
If Kate Sheppard was a giant who helped build better lives for all New Zealand women, so too were the likes of Baker, of Muir, of Williams and Audain.
We owe them the vote of thanks.