… “Think about the talent the UK has produced: Jenny Jones who dominated women’s slopestyle for six years and Billy Morgan who claimed two world firsts and an Olympic bronze and Mia is easily in their league.”
Brookes lives in Sandbach in Cheshire and her first taste of snowboarding was when she was 18 months old at Kidsgrove Ski Centre in Stoke where her grandfather David Dick was a ski instructor.
Her parents Vicky and Nigel are snowboard enthusiasts and lived in Chamonix in France for five ski seasons. When Mia was born she soon fitted into their lifestyle.
“We would spend about six weeks on snow when Mia was little and she was soon snowboarding at our level with us and always loved the snow parks, the jumps and the rails,” dad Nigel said.
English football officials say they are “confident” there will be a women’s football team representing Team GB at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Team GB reached the quarter-finals at London 2012 but did not enter a team for the Rio 2016 Games because the four British federations could not reach an agreement.
London 2012 was considered a one-off for host nation reasons but there were concerns, totally unfounded and somewhat paranoid, that a united British team for 2016 could risk a country’s independence within FIFA.
There’s no crying in baseball. But for Kay Johnston, there’s crying when you can’t play.
In the spring of 1950, in upstate New York, 13-year-old Kay Johnston wanted nothing more than to play Little League baseball. But in those days, that was out of the question. Girls weren’t encouraged to swing bats and throw balls.
Kay Johnston Massar, 81, sat down with her husband, Cy Massar, 84, at StoryCorps to tell him about the time she, quite literally, changed the rules of the game.
Kay Johnston Massar and her husband, Cy Massar, at their StoryCorps interview in San Francisco.
“One day, my mother was braiding my hair,” Kay says. “We were sitting at the kitchen table, and my brother walked out the door with his baseball bat. He was going to practice.”
“I started crying,” she tells Cy. “And I said to my mother, ‘I’m just as good as him. I wish I could play.’ ” [audio, 3:03]
Aurora Straus never intended to become a professional race car driver.
But when she was 13, her dad signed her up for a safe-driving lesson at the Monticello Motor Club in the Catskills.
“My dad’s intention was for me to learn car control skills,” she told The Post of her father, Ari Straus, the CEO of the club. But during the one-on-one session (private tracks allow drivers as young as 13 to take the wheel), instructor Stevan McAleer let her drive a few fast laps for fun. It was like a switch was tripped.
“I will never forget the feeling of the machine under me. I was so small, and I had never experienced so much power. It was the first time I had ever gone into the triple digits,” said the now-19-year-old from Cold Spring, NY.
… That is exactly the kind of scenario Shalane Flanagan imagined over and over again as she wrestled with whether to run this year’s Boston Marathon.
And she arrived at the decision that, in fact, she was not ready to spend April 16 watching from the sidelines and reciting other contenders’ mile splits on air. The 36-year-old had publicly contemplated retirement in November after winning New York City, a hard-fought marathon victory for the four-time Olympian. With that win, she’d reserved her place in history as one of the country’s most decorated and accomplished athletes, and she’d earned the satisfaction of knowing that if she went out, she went out on top. Something, however, was still gnawing at her: Was satisfaction enough?
“I created that version of Patriots’ Day in my mind, where I wasn’t competing and imagined what that felt like, and how I’d feel about it. And then I created another vision of being on the starting line—and hopefully a fit and healthy version of myself like I was in New York,” Flanagan says. “And I just felt like I would regret, for sure, not giving myself at least one more chance at Boston.”
… “Hey, I’m a professional athlete, I’m a role model and all of that but I started where (they) started,” Catchings said. “So really kind of giving them hope and to be able to see and touch somebody that’s just like them.”
Catchings overcame hearing impairment in both of her ears to not only become a collegiate All-American but also an all-star with the WNBA’s Indiana Fever and a four-time Olympic Gold Medalist.
“Sports was my avenue of getting away from the bullying, getting away from getting made fun of, getting away from being different,” she said. “It made me fit in.”
Along with the clinic, Catchings broached some other basketball-related topics.
This study aimed to determine which contractile properties measured by tensiomyography (TMG) could better differentiate athletes with high- and low-power values, as well as to analyse the relationship between contractile properties and power production capacity. The contractile properties of the vastus medialis (VM), rectus femoris (RF) and vastus lateralis (VL) of an Olympic women’s Rugby Sevens team (n = 14) were analysed before a Wingate test in which their peak power output (PPO) was determined. Athletes were then divided into a high-power (HP) and a low-power (LP) group. HP presented an almost certainly higher PPO (9.8 ± 0.3 vs. 8.9 ± 0.4 W kg−1, ES = 3.00) than LP, as well as a very likely lower radial displacement (3.39 ± 1.16 vs. 5.65 ± 1.50 mm, ES = 1.68) and velocity of deformation (0.08 ± 0.02 vs. 0.13 ± 0.03 mm ms−1, ES = 1.87) of the VL. A likely lower time of delay was observed in HP for all analysed muscles (ES > 0.60). PPO was very largely related to the radial displacement (r = −0.75, 90% CI = −0.90 to −0.44) and velocity of deformation (r = −0.70, 90% CI = −0.87 to −0.34) of the VL. A large correlation was found between PPO and the time of delay of the VL (r = −0.61, 90% CI = −0.84 to −0.22). No correlations were found for the contractile properties of RF or VM. These results highlight the importance of VL contractile properties (but not so much those of RF and VM) for maximal power production and suggest TMG as a practical technique for its evaluation.
As the mother of 14-year-old and 12-year-old girls, you don’t have to tell me that the middle school and high school years are tough on young women (and their mothers). In my household, sometimes a meltdown can be caused because my daughter doesn’t like what we are serving for breakfast. Other days it’s because she doesn’t feel comfortable with her outfit or how her hair looked when she woke up. Most nights she hasn’t gotten enough sleep because of all the fricking homework her school insists on giving her and dreads having to navigate the lunch table social circles where the girls who are supposed to be her friends somehow forget to save her a seat. With the onset of puberty and all the pressures society (and we parents) put on young women to be perfect, being a girl is hard. The great news is, sports can help!
If you want to raise a happy, healthy, motivated, successful girl, make sure she plays sports, especially in high school. That’s one of the findings in a recently released report by the nonprofit group, ROX or Ruling Our Experiences. The organization surveyed over 10,000 girls in the U.S. in 5th through 12th grades as part of the girls and sports impact report and found girls who play sports are more confident, have higher opinions of themselves and their bodies and stronger relationships with other girls compared to those who don’t play sports.
The benefits of playing sports go way beyond those associated with exercise and this study found that when girl drama really heats up, in high school, that is when the benefits of sports are biggest.
T
he training efficiency index (T E I ) is a simple index where
internal load is assessed controlling for the amount of ex-
ternal work completed (1). This measure has been shown to be
related to both changes in fitness (ES = 0.87-0.89; ± ≈0.15)
and the quantity of training load completed (r = 0.29-0.33;
± ≈0.07) (1). However, it is unknown if the TEI is affected
by acute training status (fatigue, muscle soreness, sleep qual-
ity or acute training loads). Knowledge of these relationships
may reveal whether the TEI is reflective solely of chronic adap-
tations, or if it is also useful for assessing acute training out-
comes.
Aim. The purpose of this investigation was to investigate
whether changes in the TEI were associated with pre-training
athlete status, including a subjective wellness questionnaire
and previously completed external training loads.
To determine whether secondary amenorrhea during teenage years influences bone mineral density (BMD) in female athletes in their 20s. DESIGN:
Original research. SETTING:
Japan Institute of Sports Sciences. PARTICIPANTS:
Two hundred ten elite female athletes older than 20 years were included in the study. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:
Information on the participants’ past (ie, during their teenage years) and current menstrual cycle, training time, history of stress fractures, and blood tests for hormones received was obtained. Bone mineral density of the lumbar spine was evaluated by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry; low BMD was defined as a Z-score ≤-1. We investigated the correlation factors for low BMD in athletes in their 20s by univariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis. RESULTS:
A total of 39 (18.6%) female athletes had low BMD. Secondary amenorrhea in their teens [odds ratio (OR), 7.11, 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.38-21.24; P < 0.001] and present body mass index (BMI) (OR, 0.56, 95% CI, 0.42-0.73; P < 0.001) were independent correlation factors for low BMD in the multivariable logistic regression analysis. The average Z-score for those with secondary amenorrhea in their teens and 20s, secondary amenorrhea in their 20s only, and regular menstruation was -1.56 ± 1.00, -0.45 ± 1.21, and 0.82 ± 1.11 g/cm, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS:
Secondary amenorrhea for at least 1 year during teenage years in female athletes and BMI at present was strongly associated with low BMD in their 20s.
When journalist Maya Dusenbery was in her 20s, she started experiencing progressive pain in her joints, which she learned was caused by rheumatoid arthritis.
As she began to research her own condition, Dusenbery realized how lucky she was to have been diagnosed relatively easily. Other women with similar symptoms, she says, “experienced very long diagnostic delays and felt … that their symptoms were not taken seriously.”
Dusenbery says these experiences fit into a larger pattern of gender bias in medicine. Her new book, Doing Harm, makes the case that women’s symptoms are often dismissed and misdiagnosed — in part because of what she calls the “systemic and unconscious bias that’s rooted … in what doctors, regardless of their own gender, are learning in medical schools.” [audio, 19:19]
Men suffer more concussions than women, because they play rough sports like football and rugby, but neuropsychologist Donna Broshek says females are actually at greater risk when playing similar sports like baseball and softball, men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer.
“Women do tend to get more concussions in similar sports,” she concludes.
Broshek directs the neurocognitive assessment lab at the University of Virginia. She reviewed 160 published studies on concussion in search of differences between men and women and found one linking hormones to a quicker recovery. [audio, 1:42]
Following the class of 2018 post “the P word” Anna Boniface spoke to Dr Nicky Keay to learn from her expertise on periods, athlete hormones and the role of the contraceptive pill.
They dreamed of triumph and medals, but thousands of East German athletes were given performance-enhancing drugs without their knowledge. Many are still suffering today.
Endocrine profiles have been measured on blood samples obtained immediately post-competition from 693 elite athletes from 15 Olympic Sports competing at National or International level; four were subsequently excluded leaving 689 for the current analysis. Methods
Body composition was measured by bioimpedance in a sub-set of 234 (146 men and 88 women) and from these data a regression model was constructed that enabled ‘estimated’ lean body mass and fat mass to be calculated on all athletes. One way ANOVA was used to assess the differences in body composition and endocrine profiles between the sports and binary logistical regression to ascertain the characteristic of a given sport compared to the others. Results
The results confirmed many suppositions such as basketball players being tall, weightlifters short and cross-country skiers light. The hormone profiles were more surprising with remarkably low testosterone and free T3 (tri-iodothyronine) in male powerlifters and high oestradiol, SHBG (sex hormone binding globulin) and prolactin in male track and field athletes. Low testosterone concentrations were seen 25.4% of male elite competitors in 12 of the 15 sports and high testosterone concentrations in 4.8% of female elite athletes in 3 of the 8 sports tested. Interpretation of the results is more difficult; some of the differences between sports are at least partially due to differences in age of the athletes but the apparent differences between sports remain significant after adjusting for age. The prevalence of ‘hyperandrogenism’ (as defined by the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) and IOC (International Olympic Committee)) amongst this cohort of 231 elite female athletes was the highest so far recorded and the very high prevalence of ‘hypoandrogenism’ in elite male athletes a new finding. Conclusions
It is unclear whether the differences in hormone profiles between sports is a reason why they become elite athletes in that sport or is a consequence of the arduous processes involved. For components of body composition we know that most have a major genetic component and this may well be true for endocrine profiles. [full text]
… [Phyllis Bailey’s] OSU teams were bound by the rules of six-on-six basketball, which confined three players from each team to one half of the floor. She remembers a later variation of the rule that allowed coaches to designate rovers who could navigate between the two halves of the court.
“There were people who thought that for women it was too hard to be running up and down and up and down,” Bailey said. “Which, it’s kind of funny right now to think about that kind of thing, but that was really the beginning of things.”
By any definition, Gwen Pearson is pretty smart. She’s got a Ph.D in entomology from North Carolina State University and she is now a science writer and education coordinator at Purdue University.
… The highest revenue-generating soccer club in the world, according to financial services firm Deloitte, United last week announced that they had applied to enter the second tier of the Women’s Super League.
The former European champions have until now stood out from Premier League rivals Manchester City, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool as the only top tier club not to have their own women’s side.
UEFA’s Peter Willems said it was important for the development of women’s soccer and the European body’s international competitions to have the biggest clubs fully engaged.
It’s a persistent societal stereotype that boys are naturally better at math than girls. Behavioral work has suggested no such gender difference in math abilities in children, and now, for the first time, researchers have used statistical analysis of fMRI scans of young children to also refute this stereotype.
In her Graduate Student Award-winning poster at the 25th annual CNS conference (see other recipients below), Alyssa Kersey of the University of Rochester and colleagues presented these findings based on scans of children watching educational math videos. Looking at the frontal-parietal network of the brain associated with math processing, the researchers found no robust gender differences in the rates of development of these networks. “What we find is that the girls and boys show similar levels of neural development in the age range of 3 to 10 years,” Kersey explains.
Kersey discussed this work with CNS, including its importance in getting to the root of any potential legitimate reasons for differences in how boys and girls approach math.
Former pro road rider Iris Slappendel founded the first labor union for women cyclists with one goal: getting team managers, sponsors, and riders to treat male and female cyclists with equal respect, ’cause that sure isn’t happening now