Front and center
Nikita Ducarroz of France, an elite BMX rider, once spun and whipped her bike through audacious freestyle moves in almost total isolation at international competitions.
“Four years ago, there might be eight women at major World Cup events,” she said about the tournaments held by the International Cycling Union.
Then, in 2017, the International Olympic Committee announced that men’s and women’s BMX freestyle park riding would be added to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, instantly upending the women’s side of the sport.
“Suddenly, so many new girls got interested in riding,” said Ducarroz, 24, who will represent Switzerland at the games. “A few years ago, I could name every other woman who was competing. Not anymore. It’s like a new sport now. The Olympics changed everything.”
The Olympics, which start in July but retain their original name despite being postponed to this year, are poised to be the most women-centered games in history. According to the IOC, women will make up 48.8% of the total field of Olympians, an increase from the 45% participation at the 2016 Rio Olympic Games and the 2.2% at the 1900 Olympics, the first to include women. There, 22 women appeared in five genteel “ladies” sports, including golf and croquet.
This summer, more than 5,000 female athletes will compete in more than 300 events, many involving speed, risk, strength, smarts and guts.
The competitive schedule will also highlight women’s events, slotting many during major, global broadcast periods.
This focus on the numbers and visibility of women at the Olympics represents the culmination of a strategy begun in 2014, when the IOC adopted a new planning agenda that explicitly included a commitment to “gender equality.” That goal will have been realized with these games, a committee spokesman said.
If so, the 2020 Olympics could become a liminal moment for women’s sports, amping interest in and opportunities for female athletes, attracting new sponsors and broadcast deals, opening coaching jobs and leadership roles, and furthering the push for equal pay in women’s and men’s sports. But analysts and even some athletes remain unconvinced that the games can — or should — accomplish so much.
“Historically, the boost that the Olympics and all big sporting events have given to interest in and coverage of women has not translated into lasting changes,” said Olga Harvey, the chief strategy and impact officer at the Women’s Sports Foundation, an advocacy organization founded by tennis star Billie Jean King.
These games also suffered an early dent to their reputation for supporting women after the president of the organizing committee and the executive creative director of the games’ opening and other ceremonies resigned following remarks considered sexist.
Still, most analysts and female athletes are at least grudgingly hopeful that the games will be different. No previous global sporting event has showcased women to the same extent, including in marquee new sports.
In fact, all five of the new sports debuting at or returning to this year’s games — surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing, karate, and baseball and softball — offer identical numbers of events for men and women and nearly equal totals of male and female competitors. Softball, where team rosters are smaller than in baseball, will field fewer female athletes than on the men’s side.
Similarly, multiple existing Olympic sports, some once male-dominated, have added mediagenic new events with women’s divisions, including BMX freestyle park riding and canoe singles.
Other sports have created new mixed competitions, where men and women compete together. All told, 18 events this summer will be mixed, twice as many as at the Rio Games. These mixed-gender competitions include a 4x400 track relay, mixed doubles in table tennis and a four-person mixed relay in triathlon. In that event, each racer swims 300 meters (about 325 yards), cycles 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) and sprints a final 2 kilometers, before slapping the hand of her or his teammate. (Only equestrian events allow men and women to compete head-to-head.)
For the female athletes, these new events and the games’ overall focus on women loom as a challenge and a thrill.
“I like to compete with men,” said Léonie Périault, 26, a top-ranked French triathlete, who expects to represent France in the individual triathlon at the Summer Games and the new mixed relay.
“Doing triathlon since a young age, I used to race against boys, and I wanted to beat them!” she said in an email. “Now, at the elite level, races are separate, but we do race on the same distances, and I think it shows that women are as much capable of great performances as men.”
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