I think about lots of things when I’m swimming. I think especially about comments on or by great swimmers and how I can incorporate that into my own swims.
Me in the centre, sharing a moment with swimming greats Summer McIntosh and Katie Ledecky – totally not a faked image at all 😁. Original photo is from Swimmingworldmagazine.com, from February 25, 2025.
It started a few years ago when someone told me to watch a video of Katie Ledecky breathing in freestyle. She barely got her mouth out of the water.
The last few weeks have been great for ideas from the experts.
First it was former Olympian Brent Hayden, who graciously provided a detailed answer on body rotation when I asked him a question about one of his posts that I didn’t understand. Seriously cool! And helpful advice that I am incorporating into both my distance swims and sprint practices.
Then it was a commentator at the Worlds in Singapore pointing out Summer McIntosh’s heels coming slightly out of the water when she kicked, showing her excellent horizontal position in the water. My swim coach has been trying to get me to do that for ages. I teach kids to do it in swim classes. But do I do it myself? Let’s just say I have been trying, and I’m more consistent when I entertain myself by pretending I’m swimming like Summer.
Early on Saturday morning it was Katie Ledecky after her amazing 800M swim in 8:05 (I’m happy when I do 400 in under 10 minutes). In a post-swim interview, she said she has really been working on her kick and it is paying off. Me too Katie, me too. Also me – time to review those YouTube videos on how to achieve an efficient two-beat kick like hers.
After watching the swimming on Saturday, I went to the lake for a little swim with friends. They are both faster than me so I was pleased that I was able to stay close. I worked hard, but at the end I ran out of steam and finished third. Did I laughingly compare myself to Summer McIntosh as I got out of the water? Yes, yes I did.
The lake where I dream of swimming like an Olympian.
The title of this article about Canadian ultrarunner Stephanie Case winning a the 100 mile race Ultra-trail in Snowdonia, Wales, on May 17, six months after giving birth, really gets my goat.
The article itself is just fine. It talks about how 42 year-old Case took three years off from running and this was her first big race since then. It’s honest about some of the challenges she faced both with her body and with managing the logistics of feeding her baby. Case talks about the importance of supporting new moms, and allowing them the space to pursue things they love, while also recognizing that stories like hers risk setting impossible standards for women.
Case did a truly remarkable thing. She ran 100 km in a little over 16 hours, starting a half hour behind the elite runners in the first wave. She did it a mere six months after pregnancy and birth, something that can be really hard on a woman’s body.
Ultramarathoner Stephanie Case takes a selfie while on the trail in northern Wales.
But would there have been the same attention to her story if she had been using formula, as many women do for all kinds of reasons? Somehow I doubt it. I still see way too much “breast is best” social media shaming of women can’t or chose not to breastfeed. Full disclosure: I am very much in the “breast is great if it works for you and your baby, but fed is best” camp. Formula was invented for a reason, and millions of children are alive because they had that option (especially in countries with access to clean water and good quality formula).
Still, if a stupid headline is what it takes to highlight the accomplishments of an amazing woman doing a really hard thing, I’ll swallow my grumpiness and celebrate her.
Canada’s new pro women’s soccer league, makes its debut tonight with Calgary Wild FC taking on Vancouver Rise FC.
This six team league is the brainchild of former professional and Olympic soccer player Diana Matheson. Canadian soccer superstar Christine Sinclair is also a supporter.
Halifax Tides FC, Montreal Roses FC, Ottawa Rapid FC, and AFC Toronto at the other four teams. After two seasons, the plan is expand further across Canada.
I hope the new league is met with the same level of joyous fan support as the PWHL. Women’s sports are having a moment and there are millions of soccer-playing Canadian girls who now have a chance to see their hero’s play regularly, not just at the World Cup and Olympics.
LET’ GO!!!
Northern Super League players unveil their team jerseys (photo courtesy of NSL)
Back in May, Sam and I both wrote about grandmothers as athletes in the context of an amazing marathon swim by Amy Appelhans Gubser. At the time, Sam’s son Miles told her “All your athletic achievements could be so much more impressive if I had a kid.”
I struggle to think of myself as an athlete, despite all the positive self-talk. It is getting harder now that I’m retired and we are living through a miserable wet summer that has me unmotivated to go outside. And now I am about to be a grandmother.
A young couple standing on a dock at a lake. The man has one hand around his partner, and the other on her belly. Both are smiling.
I’m thrilled, but also wondering what that will do to my self-image and the preconceptions of people around me.
Will I continue wanting to do my own fitness things or will I turn to a pile of granny goo who just wants to play with the baby whenever I can? How can I adapt what I enjoy doing to incorporate the little one? When I do those activities with a baby (or toddler or child, eventually) will I still be seen as an independent person or just an extension/caregiver playing along? Will it matter what other people think, or can I be comfortable in my own skin?
In other words, can I be a little bit like Amy Appelhans Gubser, even if I never do an amazing marathon swim?
A few years ago, my friend Bess came to visit and I took her to my ballet class. She has zero interest in ballet but was fascinated to hear the feedback we were getting: it was just like what she uses when heavy weapons fighting.
Bess, on the right in a red surcoat and holding a sword and shield, has her feet ready to advance on her opponent, who is wearing a black surcoat.
Use your core muscles. Keep your spine aligned. Bend your knees so you can spring up and land without injury. Engage those quick twitch muscles so you can move around the floor. Pay attention to the angle of your wrists: it can mean the difference between a “killing” blow and a wasted hit with the flat of your sword. Or if you are dancing, it’s the difference between a graceful line and strong back muscles vs looking like you have chicken wings for arms.
A woman in a long flowing blue dress holds her arms above her head with her elbows bent. To the left is a pair of white chicken wings with the words “chicken wings” below the,. Image: Zarely.co
That experience has stuck with me, especially when I realized it applies to other sports.
When riding my horse, all those instructions about core, posture, and arm position also apply. Swimming is also all about core, alignment and precise use Of arms and wrists for maximum efficiency when moving through the water.
From watching other sports, especially things like martial arts, it appears these principles are pretty universal.
This discovery has allowed me to take feedback from one sport and apply it to another. Mental images that helped in ballet turned out to be really useful for correcting my riding. Figuring out how certain muscles feel when properly engaged helped me recognize when I was working my core in the pool.
Equally important was the recognition that those translatable skills can make it possible to try a new sport with less fear of the unknown. This is probably that magical knowledge (whether conscious or unconscious) that makes natural athletes “natural”.
I haven’t yet decided to take up anything new, but I like the idea that I could do so and not be starting at absolute zero. In my heart, I’m like the character in the children’s book Brianna Bright, Ballerina Knight, who isn’t very good at ballet but bumbles and stumbles her way through other sports until she discovers fencing,
Brianna Bright, a cartoon girl with long brown hair in a pony tail, eats dinner while images of her as a ballerina and a fencer float above her head. Image copyright Liana Hee, 2018, text copyright Pam Calvert, 2018. Courtesy of Two Lions.
I thought about celebrating all the teams who made it out of the opening round, but what I really want to celebrate is the surprising women who showed the world that women’s soccer is becoming increasingly diverse and interesting.
Not just teams were new. There were also a couple of individual firsts. Nouhaila Benzina of Morocco is the first woman to play in a hijab at this level. She is being hailed as a role model for Muslim women everywhere, and especially those in France, where wearing a hijab is forbidden while playing sports.
Nouhaila Benzina in her Atlas Lionesses uniform.
She’s not the only hijabi though – keep an eye out for Heba Saadieh, the first ever Palestinian referee (male or female) who also wears a hijab.
Heba Saadieh making a call.
With powerhouses including the USA, Canada, Brazil and Germany out, the rest of the tournament looks rather Eurocentric. I’m not sure who I’ll cheer for now – maybe Japan because they have a very Barbie-coloured away jersey, and I love a subversive feminist icon reference, even if it was not the Japanese intention.
Japanese team celebrates after a goal. Photo by Marty MELVILLE / AFP)
Happy New Year, if you happen to be of Persian, Afghan or (many parts of) central Asian origin. To celebrate, here are some images of women athletes from Afghanistan, who have lost the ability to compete since the return of the Taliban to power, but not their desire. I found the protest photos of them in burqas, with their gear, to be very moving. Some have escaped Afghanistan and are continuing their athletic careers. Nowruz Mubarak to all of them: here’s hoping the next year will be better for all women who are unable to participate in sport.
Kimia Yousofi of Afghanistan is now living in Australia. Yousofi, shown running in a black track suit and hijab, was flag bearer for Afghanistan at the Tokyo Olympics. Image: Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Figure skating and artistic swimming both made some big changes to their rules this week. In Canada, Skate Canada removed the gender barrier in pairs skating and ice dancing so a pair can be any two people who skate together. Meanwhile, men will be able to compete in the artistic swimming team event at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Male artistic swimming has a long history, with the first competition in 1892. Male swimmers were also part of the “water pageants” that were popular in the 1930s and 40s, and the first rule book for artistic swimming, written in 1940, stated that “Competitors may be men or women or both.” However, when synchronized swimming was adopted as a sport in the USA in 1941, men and women were separated, in line with other sports overseen by the Amateur Athletic Union. Men competed against other men through the 1950s, but interest waned as the “aqua-musical” movies starring Esther Williams cemented the image of artistic swimming as a feminine activity.
Artistic swimming teams will be allowed to have a maximum of two men on each eight-person team. They have been eligible to compete at the World Aquatics Championships since 2015, in men’s solo, mixed duet and mixed team events. However, there is still no place for elite all-male teams, This leaves only rhythmic gymnastics as an Olympic discipline without both men’s and women’s participation.
Bill May, center, with other members of the U.S. synchronized swimming team at the 2000 Rome Open, where the team won gold and he won the solo competition. May is one of the sport’s greatest male athletes. He won his first US national championship in 1998, and came out of retirement to place first and second in the duet events at the 2015 World Championships. Reuters / Corbis
Figure skating also started out as a male sport, though it didn’t take long for a woman to compete against the men. Just six years after the first world championship in 1896, a British skater named Madge Syers placed second, after noticing that there was no explicit rule barring her from competing. At the very next meeting of the International Skating Union, a rule was put in place barring women from the world championships, though they created a women’s category and finally recognized the winner as a world champion in 1924. By 1908, pairs figure skating was added, with a male and female skater at the 1908 Olympics, Syers won gold in the women’s event and bronze in pairs with her husband Edgar).
Pairs skaters are required to perform certain skills according to their gender: the men must do the lifts and throws, while the women (generally much smaller) are the ones lifted and thrown. The new rules simply list which elements must be performed, but do not assign a gender to who must do them. So far, this change only applies to Skate Canada’s domestic competitions and athletes in the high-perform and Podium Pathway program.
It appears that only Canada has taken this step, although there are rumblings of interest in the USA, where pairs skater Timothy Leduc became the first openly non-binary Olympian at the Beijing Winter Olympics earlier this year. Skate Canada says that the change is to remove barriers to participation in skating, to ensure that all gender identities are accepted equally.
I wasn’t able to find photo images of pairs skaters in anything except traditional roles. If you some, or have news about other countries looking at changing the rule, please pass them along.
Earlier this month, I went with my friend Vicki to a Professional Women’s Hockey Player’s Association (PWHPA) game. It was awesome!
Tennis legend and PWHPA Investor Billie Jean King made the ceremonial puck drop. I got to see some of my favourite Olympic players, including Brianne Jenner and Sarah Nurse. I also got to watch crowds of girls excited to see their heroes and dream that they might might someday join them as professionals. Every single official was a woman.
Billie Jean King drops the puck as players from both teams look on.A crowd of girls in winter coats and hats are pressed up against the glass as Olympian Brianne Jenner skates by.
It was so much fun to see Vicki’s enthusiasm too. She spent the entire weekend at the arena, watching several games and doing the adult skills clinic. For her, seeing the players up close and watching how they move on the ice was a real dream. She is pretty sure she smiled for the entire time she was doing drills and asking questions; she couldn’t stop grinning during my time watching the game with her.
Vicki wears her new PWHPA jersey and gives the thumb’s up while standing in a hockey arena.
For me, the best moment was when Vicki told me about a discussion at the end of the skills clinic. Participants had a chance to talk to the players and one of them, Emerance Maschmeyer, told her that while they enjoy hosting clinics for young girls what they really look forward to are the clinics for adult women. She said they are inspired to see the women learning new skills and having such a huge passion for the game. When Emerance found out Vicki’s age (50), her response was that Vicki is old enough to be her mom and “it makes me want to get my mom out playing hockey!”
Sometimes on this blog we get frustrated with all the inequalities that still exist in women’s sport. But things really have changed since Vicki and I were kids. Vicki’s parents tried to enrol her in hockey when she was a kid in Saskatchewan but they were told “girls don’t play hockey”. I wanted to play on the newly-formed girls team when I was about 13, but my parents were the ones who said “girls don’t play hockey”.
Now we have professional players and role models, even if they are paid a pittance compared to the men. There are mixed and girls/women-only leagues. it’s still hard to catch a women’s game, but it is no longer weird.
Vicki Thomas is a former competitive cyclist who now swims, bikes and plays hockey for fun in Ottawa. You can keep up with her here https://ottawa.cx or on Twitter.
Diane Harper lives and swims in Ottawa. Her recent enthusiasm for cycling is due to Vicki’s influence.
Lia Thomas’ recent win at the NCAA swim meet has sparked another round of debate about the rights of transgender athletes to participate in sports.
Here is what Sarah Sardinia wrote on Twitter: To all those pushing this false narrative that Trans People have an advantage in sports, and are using Lia Thomas as “proof”, let me lay down some stats here …
1650 yard distance Lia pre-transition: 14:54.765 Lia post-transition: 15:59.71 (lost 65 seconds) Male record: 14:12.08 (Kieran Smith) Female record: 15:03:31 (Katie Ledecky) She was 40 seconds behind the male record, now she is 56 behind the female
500 yard distance Lia’s best pre-transition, 4:18:72 Lia’s current, 4:34:06 Female record (Katie Ledecky), 4:24:06 Male record (Kieran Smith), 4:06:32
200 yard distance Prior to transition 1:39.31 Male record, 1:29.15 After transition 1:41.93 Female record of 1:39.10
See a pattern here? Not advantage, consistency
There’s a reason that with all the Trans Women competing in sports for years, she is one of the only top ranking ones, because she’s always been one of the top ranking. You can read more here about the data.
To put it another way:
And those images really need to be juxtaposed with the next one, which includes a photo of Olympic champion Katie Ledecky. Katie is 6 feet tall, which makes her one inch shorter than Lia, and two inches shorter than Missy Franklin, who set that NCAA 200 yard record in 2015. There is a lot of talk about how height, and size, and arm span give men natural advantages over women. Swimmers like Michael Phelps have natural advantages, including height, huge feet and flexibility, arm reach, long torsos and relatively short legs. That’s true both among men and women.
The reality is that the vast majority of youth athletes of any gender don’t compete at the elite level. However, even as amateur athletes they face discrimination, so few participate, especially trans girls. A recent Reuters article noted that “The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2019 that just 1.8% of high school students in the country are transgender, and the Human Rights Campaign has said that, according to surveys, only about 12% play on girls’ sports teams.”.
Some do do compete as boys or men without too much attention, such as Schuyler Bailar, the first openly trans swimmer in the NCAA men’s first division, and Chris Mosier, the first openly trans athlete to qualify for Team USA and who competed in the Olympic Trials in January 2020. Others, such as Mack Beggs, the Texas high school wrestler forced to compete against girls even after starting to take testosterone, are forced into the same unwelcome spotlight as Lia Thomas. By focusing so much on biology and physiology, the impact is the dehumanization of those kids.
Lots more research is needed on the impact of hormones on performance, and there are legitimate concerns about putting competitors of significantly different sizes/abilities in the same categories when there is a risk of injury. The Christian Science Monitor has done a decent job of trying to summarize the latest research and how it is interpreted. But the bottom line for me and most of the people I know can be summarized like this:
Anyone saying trans girls have an unfair advantage have never seen me perform a sport. Cartoon by Sophie Labelle (https://www.serioustransvibes.com/)
