Welcome to Strong Girl Talk, where we dive into the latest in sports science, performance, and well-being—all with a focus on women and girls in sport. This week Sasha and Molly dive into Molly’s day at the ESPNW Conference held last week in Toronto. Molly shares her top takeaways. As a heads up for the summer we’re moving to every-other-week episodes.
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Molly’s Key Takeaways from the ESPNW Summit Canada:
What we love about the ESPNW conference is the video replay available for free from previous events. Expect 2025 to be posted soon, for now you can watch 2024 and 2023. You’ll hear in the episode all of Molly’s Takeaways, but below are the top 5:
When women walk into the stadium or the field of play, they walk in confident and proud. Women’s sport has welcomed FASHION. Men’s sport could learn from this, move away from just suits and let players show up as their authentic selves.
Sports—especially women’s sports—are political. This is positive, but also a burden specifically on women.
Women’s sports are finally getting investment–from venture capitalists, if not from governing bodies. Is the future of women’s sport going to come from non-endemic funding?
How research is presented matters: case in point, several speakers mentioned the incredible Rally Report released by Canadian Women in Sport. Why? It’s accurate, yes, but also, it was launched so well. These are the notes we need to be taking as we try to build awareness. Numbers matter, but their presentation matters just as much.
Building the Future. We need to think differently, like designing toilet facilities with equity, instead of equality in mind, what Sasha called ‘Bathroom Math.’
🏃♀️🤰🏻🎾🚴♀️🥏Sports Highlights:
🚴♀️ There was another UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, this time in Val di Sole, and another Canadian Woman, Nicole Bradbury , atop the U23 XCC podium. We have fun on our bikes here in Canada, and you can see it paying dividends from the playground to the podium.
Sasha is in Spain for the WFDF (World Flying Disc Federation) U24 World Championships to watch her stepson play on the Open Team. Ultimate is an incredibly inclusive and accessible sport, but we also talked about the stress and challenges with coaching. As we were reminded by Hannah Silva-Breen last week, one comment can stay with an athlete, and it may not be about body image, it may be something else you say as a coach.
We’ve talked a lot about Faith Kipyegon and her sub 4-minute mile attempt - officially called Breaking4: Faith Kipyegon vs. the 4-Minute Mile - from the shoes to the clothes to the pacing. The event was streamed live on both Prime Video and Nike’s YouTube channel at 1:15 p.m. ET on June 26 (as well as on Nike’s Instagram, TikTok and Douyin accounts). She did not break the 4-minute barrier, but she did run almost 1.5 seconds faster than her current world record.
We’re applauding the efforts from the Australian Sport Institute (AIS), World-leading recommendations to support mum athletes. For too long female-bodied athletes were just expected to follow in the path of male-bodied athletes, but especially when it comes to pregnancy, and AIS covers this from pre-conception all the way through to postpartum, the path is different. While this does not address the menstrual cycle and those performance difference, this is an incredible step forward. You can read all the parenthood recommendations here. This also follows on the heels of the WTA announcement protecting women’s rankings during fertility treatments.
Here in Canada Bill S212 National Strategy for Children and Youth Act. We loved hearing Senator Marnie McBean’s speak to the senate this week advocating for sport and physical activity for all children and youth. Sasha and her team at U of T continue to drive change in this area.
Malala Yousafzai has launched an initiative to support women’s sport, called “Recess”, an initiative to champion women’s and girls’ rights through increased participation and investment in sports and physical activity globally. As more and more big names, like Malala, get behind both professional and community sport we think we’re going to see real change in the next five years.
As we continue to see the rise in professional sports, we’re drawing attention to XO Gravel. A fully supported women’s team that is not a subset of a men’s team. Thanks to Ruby West and the team for dreaming this up. Think you could be a member of this team? Check it out and submit your application.
We’ll be back on July 11th!
Remember you can follow Molly and Sasha on Social Media including:
Molly - @mollyjhurford @stronggirlpublishing
Sasha - @SGollishRuns @Yellow_Running_Shoes
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