If I hadn’t talked to my high school coach about what I saw, I might have fallen into the same trap in college that has annihilated enough talent to fill several Olympic teams. If I hadn’t made the medal podium, I might have doubted my choice of pasta at that dinner. Many of the girls near the front had fueled themselves with salad the night before.
In the race, some of them crumpled, and others flew. The next morning, the top 32 girls and 32 boys in the nation would line up to race for medals, bragging rights and college scholarships. That was the meal of choice for several girls seated together at a pre-race dinner before we raced one another at the 1998 National Foot Locker Cross Country Championships. The win-at-all-costs culture of competitive high school sports manifested itself early for me - in the form of a salad with dressing on the side. I’ve had a lot of time to think about how to fix it. What’s new, and what I think has triggered such outrage, is that she has audaciously put the blame where it belongs: on a sports system built by and for men.
Over the past week, the athletic world has been embroiled in a reckoning following high school phenom Mary Cain’s story of suffering from an eating disorder and suicidal thoughts in pursuit of athletic success.
0 kommentar(er)
