How can Laura Trott's wins this weekend be lost in a sea of Football. What happened to the BBC's commitment to Women's sport and cycling? May be she should cry a bit and get the attention of the press.
As it is she gets on a with the job.
This is the real point and is common in most if not all areas of the media. Here at amateur level, the grass roots of cycling [or any other sport for that matter] discrimination is rife, from prize money to reporting. Cycling Weekly for instance is one of the biggest offenders, very often ignoring women's results completely.
Too many areas of sport are still run by men, in our branch it is old men who hold 1950's values where the woman should be at home rearing children, cooking and cleaning, It is really quite shocking, only yesterday we were at a prize presentation where the winning man gets a trophy and xx amount of money while the first woman gets less money and no trophy, how can that be right? What is worse is that the men are not even aware they are being discriminatory or sexist.
One of the problems as we see it, is that men are always happy to beat their breasts and shout, "look at me", while women are much less demonstrative and just get on with it. Witness any forum topic on here that turns into a shouting match and gets personal, how often do you see a woman involved?
It is my hope that somewhere along the line a female lawyer will challenge the media and people that run sporting organisations and point out that they are in breach of the 2010 Equality Act. Back at grass roots we continue to chip away at medieval attitudes.
