TELEGRAPH WOMEN'S SPORT: "All I could think was, ‘Everybody can see my bum'" | Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill
Bryony Gordon's Mad World
The Telegraph
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this extra episode of the Telegraph Women’s Sport Podcast, we’re tackling a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of sports: the impact of kit on female athletes. Hosted by Dame Laura Kenny, we’re joined by a line-up of guests who know the challenges all too well.
Tess Howard, a pioneering England and GB hockey player, shares her journey advocating for rule changes that allow women to wear shorts instead of skorts, explaining the practical and symbolic significance of this change for female athletes.
Olympic gold medallist Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill takes us back to her early career, outlining the discomfort she faced with ill-fitting sportswear, and discusses the positive changes brought about through athlete feedback and collaboration with kit brands.
We also hear from Laura Youngson, co-founder of IDA Sports, and netball star Britney Clarke, who shares her personal struggles with kit sizes.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Maggie Alfonci, former England rugby player and now a MasterCard ambassador. |
| 0:06.0 | MasterCard is proud to sponsor the Telegraph Women's Sport podcast hosted by Dame Laura Kenny. |
| 0:12.3 | MasterCard has championed women's sport for over 25 years. |
| 0:16.6 | Discover more at MasterCard..com.ukuk, UK, forward slash impact. |
| 0:27.0 | Welcome to the Telegross Women's Sport podcast with me, Laura Kenny. In this episode, |
| 0:32.2 | we're diving into an important topic that has much greater impact on women's sport than first |
| 0:36.1 | meets the eye. Directly impacting |
| 0:38.2 | participation and performance, kit affects so much more than how we look. From uncomfortable |
| 0:43.4 | PE uniforms to professional gear that hinders performance, the issue of appropriate sportswear |
| 0:48.7 | isn't just about style. It's about participation, safety and how women athletes are perceived. |
| 0:54.4 | So for me actually, right, I will start by going right back to my days of being at school. |
| 1:01.7 | And I will ask one of my guests in a minute about, because I know this is quite close to her heart. |
| 1:08.9 | For me, I had to wear the shorts and the skirt in my P.E. lessons, and I absolutely hated it. |
| 1:15.0 | The shorts were horrific. |
| 1:16.3 | They were so small, it was unbelievable. |
| 1:19.2 | And the skirt, to be honest, just made everything way more uncomfortable because it wasn't a score. |
| 1:22.6 | It was literally separates. |
| 1:25.1 | And, okay, I loved sport. So for me, it probably didn't put me off, but did it put |
| 1:32.4 | lots of my friends off? 100%. I mean, the shorts, honestly, you might as well have just been in a |
| 1:38.3 | pair of pants. And there were so many of my classmates who just didn't want to do P would come up with any |
| 1:46.3 | excuse because of the school uniform. Now by the end of my time at school they actually changed |
| 1:52.5 | it and we started off with a school and then by the time I left it actually got changed to shorts |
... |
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