MHAIRI MACLENNAN

The GB international runner made headlines when she waived her right to anonymity and spoke openly about the abuse she suffered from her coach, demanding change to the rules allowing coaches found guilty of misconduct to coach again after five years.

The zero-tolerance campaign has changed the direction of my life and trajectory of my career. We wrote an open letter to UK Athletics asking why coaches found guilty of physical or sexual abuse were only given short-term bans. Anything less than a permanent ban is unacceptable. They changed their policy.

So we set up the advocacy group Kyniska to tackle policy changes in women’s sport. We need structural change, which leads to cultural change; you can’t change a culture if the structure doesn’t reflect that. Now, we’re campaigning for a zero-tolerance policy in all sports. It’s our first big mission and may take time, but we’ll persevere.

We’re also working on another campaign called Safe on the Streets. After the murder of Sarah Everard, there was a lot of discussion among active women about safety and how to protect yourself when running outside. Some apps offer a function to track your activity or share your location with family and friends. But the biggest, Strava, had a paywall on their safety feature. Of course they have a business model, but we don’t think women should have to pay for safety. We wrote to them asking them to remove the paywall. They replied to say they abhor harassment and want to promote women’s safety and that there are updates coming. [Strava made its Beacon safety feature free to all users in August 2021.]

We’re also developing an athlete toolkit, based on what we feel is lacking in the reporting process for abuse. It covers things such as knowing the signs, what constitutes abuse, who to talk to, victim blaming and so on. It’s about bridging the gap between governing bodies, runners and athletes, and it will go out to all clubs, at all levels.’