Lesley Riddoch: Let Olympics rewrite women’s role

COMPETITORS first, female later, gender is at last less important than taking part on an equal footing.

Sunday belonged to Andy Murray – with a masterful performance that disproved naysayers and almost overshadowed the efforts of Britain’s track athletes the previous night. To live at this time of unexpected, exhilarating, athlete-induced euphoria is a strange experience indeed.

Team GB’s unprecedented medal sweep on Super Saturday was watched by 17.1 million viewers, equalling the number who watched the Men’s Wimbledon Final in July.

Murray apart – those consecutive Olympic victories by Ennis, Rutherford and Farah must surely rank as the most exciting 45 minutes of live TV for decades – but the day was ground-breaking in another way as well.

Super Saturday was the culmination of perhaps the most women-friendly Olympics ever – where female athletes have finally been treated as athletes and performers – not “boring also-rans” or “decorative dolly birds”.

After one false start (tabloid slavering over the women’s beach volleyball), the London Olympics has developed into a little bubble of good will and equality where female competitors have been accorded respect by commentators, competitors, crowds and Olympic authorities alike. The result has been inspiring.

Jessica Ennis has not just been the “Face of the Games,” – she has become its very embodiment.

Not just a photogenic face nor Britain’s most successful female athlete, like Belfast pentathlete Mary Peters in decades past, Ennis has managed to take the extraordinary hype and expectation of 60 million people in her stride. She is an exceptional woman – totally performance focussed as she ran, jumped and threw her way to Olympic Gold and then openly emotional when she achieved it. In fact, not that different from the very masculine Chris Hoy.

And that’s the point. At these extreme reaches of effort, performance and relentless close-up TV coverage, gender has become visibly less important than individual personality. And for once TV coverage has been on-side, broadcasting the multitude of movements, gestures, insights and reactions that together create interest and convey respect.

In glimpsing certain moments during these Olympics, we have all been changed.

Like Andy Murray conferring with mixed doubles tennis partner Laura Robson – she (the 18 year-old) talking – he (the Olympic Gold medal winner) listening.

Or Victoria Pendleton crying her eyes out against the mighty frame of Sir Chris Hoy after her cycling upset – close to the “classic” frail woman/mighty man cliché but instantly recognisable as a moment of consolation between two teammates.

There were images of unconventional beauty too. Olympic Gold Medal winning cyclist Joanna Rowsell – who lost her hair after childhood alopecia – stood on the podium without any embarrassment about her less than “classically” feminine appearance. Afterwards she said, “I forgot to bring my wig.”

And then the crowning image of the night as her heptathlon “rivals” jogged happily beside Jessica Ennis round the Olympic track – accomplished, super-fit women finally relaxing together as they waved to the crowd and acknowledged the flag-draped Briton as leader of their pack.

A rare sight with a revolutionary message about the changing status of women across the world.

At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, 26 countries sent no female competitor – in 2012 every country present sent at least one. Even if the first female competitors from these Muslim nations fail to reach a final they’re a source of inspiration -- not least because of the harassment and even death threats endured to reach London. If anyone doubts that, consider the terrible fate of “westernised” 17 year-old Shafilea Ahmed at the hands of her own family. Despite the hijabs, headscarves and concealing outfits, some Muslim women have risked everything to compete. And yet female competitors are still under covert sponsor pressure to “look good.”

According to former Olympic badminton medallist Gail Emms “I had sponsors telling me to wear fake tan and a tight kit. But you can’t be like, ‘No, I don’t believe in that’ when you have a mortgage to pay. I know I got those sponsors because I was blonde. But I had to play their game if I wanted to make a living.”

Might that pressure ease in the wake of London 2012?

Every day of our lives secondary characteristics (like gender, able-bodiness, race, nationality, class and sexuality) are allowed to become primary points of distinction and identity. For a glorious month, those constraints have been dropped and individual diversity has triumphed. Some athletes are terse, others blessed with beatific smiles. Some are loners, others team players. Some are happy to take silver, some devastated by the failure to win gold. Some are tall, some tiny. Some are black, some mixed race, some white. And in a few weeks, when the Paralympic Games take place some will be disabled too.

So what.

The 2012 Olympics has been a glorious, permissive watching experience where neither men in tears nor women with muscles have had their sexuality questioned. TV commentators have exhibited equally detailed knowledge of all competitors – their careers, personal bests and “back stories” (male and female).

And the ugly early commercialism of the Games is no longer thrust in our faces. It’s been a holiday from all that’s usually worst about Bloke-ish Britain (and if you’re missing it turn on Radio Scotland and catch the football commentary.)

Weary of celebrity falseness and broken by endless, trust-sapping revelations of corporate greed, the British public has finally found meritocracy thriving and sampled its restorative, motivational power.

But vicarious experience has its limits.

We are (in general) a fat, sedentary, inactive nation.

So we now need a smooth baton change between Olympic and post-Olympic Britain

According to Sue Tibballs, Chief Executive of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation, “54 per cent of people believe women’s sport is just as exciting as men’s, and 61 per cent would watch more of it if it were televised. With just 5 per cent of current TV sports coverage, increasing it wouldn’t be hard.”

In a culture where being thin is prized over being fit, WSSF research also shows 50 per cent of girls think getting sweaty is “not feminine” and just one in ten girls does the recommended amount of daily exercise.

Watching Jessica Ennis alone will not resolve that problem – but it will have sparked more serious get fit resolutions than Hogmanay.

The Olympics have prompted BBC viewers to reassess the capacity of our elite sportsmen and women. The revolution in everyday fitness will be our own.