fitness · Olympics

Salute to Older Women Winter Paralympians

The Winter Paralympics is a smaller event than the Olympics, but like its counterpart, it had some impressive older women participating. I’m sure I missed a few so please let me know who I should be adding.

Clockwise from top left: Ina Forrest (paralympic.ca), Collinda Joseph (Reuters/Louisa Gouliamaki), Andrea Eskau (Paralympic.org), Cécile Hernandez (France Paralympique),

Wheelchair Curler Ina Forrest, 63, is making her fifth consecutive appearance at the Paralympics. She’s the oldest member of the Canadian Paralympic team. Forrest has won a medal at every Games she’s competed in (starting in 2010) including three golds and two bronze. If you didn’t watch any of this year’s curling, go find some highlight reels. It was very exciting.

Collinda Joseph 60, is a two-time Paralympian and Team Canada’s gold-medal-winning wheelchair curling lead. Joseph played wheelchair basketball for many years but first tried curling in 2006 and fell in love with the sport .

Cécile Hernandez is a 51-year-old French para-snowboarder and four-time Paralympic medallist, with gold medals from Beijing 2022 and Milano Cortina 2026, a silver medal from Sochi 2014, and both a silver and a bronze from PyeongChang 2018.

Andrea Eskau, who will turn 55 tomorrow, has competed at every Summer and Winter Games since making her debut at Beijing 2008, except for the 2022 Winter Games. In the winter, she competes in Para biathlon and Para cross-country skiing, and in the summer, she races in Para cycling. She has won four golds and a bronze at three different summer games, four silvers and a bronze in cross-country skiing, and three golds and a bronze in biathlon. She competed in five events at Milano-Cortina and her best result was 4th in cross-country skiing.

athletes · objectification · Olympics

Winter Olympics and “Smoking Hot Sports Babes”

It’s been awhile since we’ve blogged about the objectification of female athletes, five years in fact. But since it’s the Olympics that post is trending again.

And that’s odd because just yesterday Susan and I were watching women’s snowboarding on television and looking on in awe as Italy’s Michela Moioli won gold in women’s snowboard cross. Such athleticism. Such remarkable young women. So much talent and skill.

Also, aside from ponytails peeking out from under helmets I had to look at the screen and listen to see whether I was watching the men’s or the women’s event.

I briefly allowed myself the thought that one advantage of the women’s Olympic events is that with all the gear sports announcers stay away from comments about the athletes’ bodies. Hah! So naive. So wrong. Silly me.

Even dressed in snowboarding gear that’s that not enough though for some male sports commentators to keep their focus on athleticism and performance.

I was sad to read this in SF Gate.

“After Kim won the gold medal in women’s halfpipe on Tuesday, Barstool Sports commentator Patrick Connor, who also appears on San Francisco-based KNBR, appeared on the “Dialed-In with Dallas Braden” show on Barstool Radio’s SiriusXM channel and made a series of inappropriate comments about Kim.
“She’s fine as hell,” Connor said. “If she was 18, you wouldn’t be ashamed to say that she’s a little hot piece of ass. And she is. She is adorable. I’m a huge Chloe Kim fan.”

Read more about it here.

Connor has apologized. He’s also been fired.

Grrr. Insert the righteous feminist rant here about the objectification of the bodies of women athletes.

What do you think? Are things better worse than they were? Better or worse in the Winter Olympics?

Photo from Unsplash. It’s an image of a snowboarder coming down a hill, most of the person is obscured by a stream of snow.