Foto por From left to right: Gabi Juan/European Judo Union, ©FFHandball/Icon_Sport and Zhizhao Wu/Getty Images.
By Julie Trosic
Although the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will be the first to achieve full gender parity among athletes, there have been other considerable advances in recent years in the area of equity in sport. New mixed events, greater visibility of women’s competitions, more women coaches and referees at the highest level…
But there is another issue that is still slow to gain ground: menstruation.
Rightly so, more and more athletes have opened up about this topic, so recurring in their lives as women, that it is no longer taboo.
From the testimony of the swimmer from the People’s Republic of China Fu Yuanhui in the Rio 2016 Olympic Gamesmany elite athletes have opened up about the topic of menstruation.
“In fact, my period started last night,” Fu told the Chinese network CCTV after missing out on the podium in the final of the women’s 4×100 meter medley relay. “So I feel very weak and very tired. But that’s no excuse. After all, I didn’t swim very well.”
Although menstrual symptoms vary from one woman to another, this female problem has begun to manifest itself visibly in all areas.
ATHLETES SPEAK OUT ABOUT MENSTRUATION
“I have been doing high-level sports for more than 10 years and last year they asked me for the first time about my menstruation,” the Olympic handball champion said indignantly. Estelle I’m Minko in 2020 on the website of the Régles Élémentaires association.
A few months before his double victory in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games(less than 63 kg and mixed team), the judoka Clarisse Agbégnénou She became an ambassador for a brand of 100% French menstrual panties, to end the taboo of menstruation. For her, it is necessary to address the specificities of women’s sports, in particular menstruation and health protection.
“As a judo practitioner in a white kimono, it is complicated,” he explained to France Info.
In a sport like golf, where it is important not to lose your cool, the New Zealander Lydia Ko talked about her menstrual pain and tension during the Palos Verdes Championship 2022. “When I was younger, I would have found it embarrassing, but now I don’t think it’s embarrassing to talk about it because I’m not the only one, right?”
As if to break the ice, the figure skater Maé-Bérénice Méité she talked about it with several athletes on her YouTube channel: the American Ashley Cain-Gribble in the same discipline, Assmaa Niang (judo), Youna Dufournet (artistic gymnastics) and Jessika Guehaseim (hammer throw and rugby) confirmed that no athlete is an exception to the rule.
THE RULES EVOLVE AND FINALLY CHANGE FOR THE BETTER
The rules have also gained ground in team sports. Thanks to the English forward Beth Meadwhich said white was “not practical when (menstruation) time comes,” several soccer teams played in blue shorts at the 2023 Women’s World Cup.
The Irish women’s rugby team also wore blue shorts in the 2023 Women’s Six Nations Tournament.
A few months later, in Wimbledontennis players were allowed to wear colored underwear for the first time in the tournament’s history, 146 years after its creation.
In more general terms, the Brazilian fighter Aline Da Silva She also fights outside the ring to improve gender equality in this sport through her association Mempodera. Specifically, the organization has published a post on Instagram promoting free access to health protection during menstruation in a country plagued by poverty.
“What opportunity do we give girls and women if they lose several days of productivity a month because of menstruation?” was asked on the Universo Online portal.
BREAKING THE TABOOS ABOUT MENSTRUATION BY STUDYING THE CYCLE IN ATHLETES
Since 2021, the program Empow’Her from the French National Institute of Sport, Expertise and Performance (INSEP) studies the impact of female physiology on the performance of high-level female athletes. Summarized by journalist Fanny Rosselin through the testimonies of the researcher Juliana Antero and the triathlete Audrey Merlethe program aims to provide scientific knowledge on a topic in which there are large gaps, while at the same time serving as support for female athletes.
How do they do that? Collecting different types of data through a tracking app: during training, when they wake up, their fitness, their well-being and their menstrual symptoms, if any.
Increased fatigue, pain, cramps, digestive problems or inflammation… These are just some of the effects of menstruation on athletes, although the signs are very variable and specific for each person. And although these symptoms are not “disabling”, measurements indicate that they do affect the quality of training.
“Menstruation has not been shown to reduce an athlete’s performance, unless she has problems with her cycle, that is, very painful periods,” she explains. Carole Maitrea gynecologist at INSEP, who has published a detailed document on the subject.
Specifically, the program Empow’Her has contributed to making public the debate in high-level sport on a topic that has always been taboo due to the lack of information about it. According to Juliana Antero, the more the topic is addressed, the less taboo it will be.
According to the magazine Sportingseveral French sports federations participated in the INSEP study, which involved 80 female athletes in 2022.
Although the ultimate goal of the Empow’Her program is to help French athletes so that their menstruation does not negatively impact them ahead of the next Olympic Games, the scientists involved hope that Paris 2024 do not mark the end of a cycle.
Via: olympics.com
2024-03-28 23:37:28
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