Godspeed, Gabrielle Anderson!

The U.S. Track & Field Olympic Trials is a cutthroat event. Only the top three athletes per event, provided they had met the required Olympic "A" standard, will be sent to quadrennial event. There are no exceptions, whether the athlete is a budding collegiate talent or an established Olympic champion.

Read: "Track Beauty of the Week - Gabrielle Anderson"

Middle distance runner Gabrielle Anderson stands out among the rest because she is a two-time cancer survivor. The University of Minnesota graduate has recovered fully from her battles with the Big "C," consistently running faster times the past two years.

Anderson has a personal best of 4:06.46 in the 1500m run, ranking her among the top middle distance athletes in Eugene.

Godspeed, Gabrielle Anderson!

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Nike "Voices" Advertisement

I don't get it how people of the past could discriminate against women playing sports. Our society has grown meteorically from the days when women were not allowed in track events longer than 800m. Nowadays, female sports stars are just as big as their male counterparts. Case in point are the Grand Slam tennis tournaments, where the women's prizes have been upgraded to the same level as the men's event. 

I just love the new Nike "Voices" advertisement. It features pioneers of women's sports like Joan Benoit Samuelson, Lisa Leslie, Diana Tauresi, and Marlen Esparaza "directly addressing the viewer about their own experiences with gender discrimination." Leslie and Tauresi are established basketball stars, while Esparaza is an amateur boxer. Benoit-Samuelson won the first ever women's Olympic marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.

Read: Nike Celebrates Title IX, Female Athletes with ‘Voices'

As a sportsman myself I find sportswomen naturally attractive. There is something inherently beautiful seeing a female sprint hurdler skim over those ten flights of hurdles with grace, or watching a female tennis star trade ground strokes with an equally fierce competitor.

Our world today is not perfect. There are still places in the world where women are treated as second-class citizens, with their basic rights trampled. Although there are still sports which prohibit the Olympic participation of the fairer sex, those disciplines remain the minority.