The Daily Telegraph - Sport

A note from our Women’s Sports Editor

- Anna Kessel

If you are a woman in sport, you learn pretty quickly about all the things that you supposedly cannot do. Never mind that elsewhere women are rocket scientists, astrophysi­cists, prime ministers, soldiers and Nobel prize winners, for some reason sport seems to rigidly retain an archaic set of ideas as to what women can and cannot achieve.

Something as mundane as leading a team of men in playing a game of football, for example, is firmly situated in the realm of the impossible. When you say it out loud it really sounds ridiculous, and yet to overcome these entrenched prohibitio­ns takes enormous strength, courage and energy.

While editing this issue dedicated to the women powering through myths and misconcept­ions, I came across a quote from Corinne Diacre – the France women’s national team coach most famous for managing the men’s Clermont Foot side in Ligue 2 in 2014-17. Her story is one of classic myth-busting, not only punching through the “grass ceiling” in her appointmen­t, but excelling in her role, lifting the club to a seventh-place finish despite a modest budget. The effort, though, cost her.

“You can fight for a day or two, a week or two,” she told

The New York Times of the constant pressures of being a woman managing a men’s team. “But for weeks or years? It’s really complicate­d.”

In those words I felt her exhaustion. How can it be right that women have to expend such energy just to achieve parity? Women have already contribute­d to the wonders of this world in millions of ways in spite of these additional burdens. Just think how much more we could do if allowed to simply get on with our hopes and dreams; if we had the full use of our powers; if we had the backing of the structures around us; if we did not have to fight to be heard, fight to be allowed in the same room, the same job, the same salary. It all feels like such a terrible waste of time and energy.

But push on we do, and thank goodness. And so, this issue is a celebratio­n of the sportswome­n who break down barriers on behalf of us all. From the little-known story of the terrific teenage baseball talent Jackie Mitchell, all the way back in 1931, to Olympic hockey gold medallists Kate and Helen Richardson-walsh, pushing to educate the next generation about the LGBTQ+ community.

After all, the benefits that such efforts bring are felt not only by women, but men as well. Because enabling women to be their best selves surely helps us all.

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