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.

Pound per Pound

Women are often unjustly referred to as the "weaker sex." All things being equal, a man pitted against a woman in athletic competition is bound achieve a sizable measure of advantage, because of the former's testosterone level. Pound per pound, the term "weaker sex" couldn't be more erroneous.

In my country, the Philippines, triathlon has experienced an exponential growth in interest. The most prestigious competition, the Cobra Energy Drink Ironman 70.3 Philippines, has received widespread media coverage. One particular fact piqued my interest: the winner of the women's elite category, Magali Tisseyre (4:27.01), was ten minutes faster than the toughest Filipino male triathlete, Neil Catiil (4:37.10). Indeed, the sheer experience of Tisseyre in the international triathlon circuit dwarfs that of the young, 24-year old Catiil. After all, the domestic triathlon scene is relatively new, compared to its more established foreign counterparts.

Magali Tisseyre

Photo from slowtwitch.com

Another excellent case to point of comparison is Edward Lasquette's Philippine national pole vault record. As a 21-year old, the Filipino-American vaulter cleared the opening height of 5.00m at the Barcelona Olympics, rewriting the domestic record books.

Read hurdler49's "Glory Days"

Yelena Isinbayeva's (Елена Гаджиевна Исинбаева) pole vault world record of 5.06m is marginally better than Lasquette's best mark. Again, experience can also be a factor, with Isinbayeva achieving the record mark at 28-years old. Furthermore, Isinbayeva is an experienced competitor - lording over pole vault meets the world over.

Yelena Isinbayeva

Photo from marcopako

Sport, indeed, breaks barriers. Athletic competition, as showcases of feats of strength, human fortitude and endurance is an avenue for change.

We've made gigantic leaps and bounds the past one hundred years. Nowadays, it seems appalling to think that the Olympic's centerpiece event, the Marathon, opened its prestigious doors to the fairer sex only in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics - almost 100 years since the first modern Olympics in 1896. However, the highly-conservative International Olympic Committee still has some bulwarks of old-school chauvinism. For instance, ski-jumping remains exclusive only to men.

Read "Why Can't Women Ski Jump in the Olympics?"

Nevertheless, the inclusion of women's amateur boxing in the 2012 London Olympic Games puts the Olympic movement in good light - a bright beacon of hope to the Philippines, in particular, a country that has yet to win its first Olympic gold medal.