Judy Murray opens up on Olympic kit snub which made her feel like she ‘didn’t matter’

Judy Murray has spoken about how she was made to feel “like she didn’t matter” at the London 2012 Olympics after team bosses forgot to provide her with kit.

Great Britain coach Judy Murray watches on as Laura Robson practises during a training session at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Murray was captain of Britain’s female tennis team at the Games, which were being held in the UK for the first time in 64 years.

The Scot said she didn’t make a fuss at the time because she didn’t want to damage team spirit and ended up borrowing kit from the players.

Murray, who described captaining the GB team at the Olympic as “a massive moment in her life”, felt she was overlooked because she was a woman.

Speaking on the Sky Sports programme Rise With Us, she said it was an example of unconscious bias against women in the sports workforce.

“I was the captain of the Fed Cup team, so therefore I was the captain of the tennis team at the Olympics and we had four girls playing in it,” Murray said.

“I remember going to the team house which was very close to Wimbledon so we could just walk across. I remember going there with the team to pick up the kit a couple of days before the event started and everything was laid out in piles with players’ names upon them.

Judy Murray at a practice session ahead of the 2012 London Olympic Games.

“So there was [kit for] all the coaches, the players, the fitness trainers. And I walked round the whole thing and thought, ‘there isn’t one for me, there isn’t one with my name on it’.

“So I took my time and then I said to the guy who was the team manager: ‘Where’s my kit?’.

“And the look on his face! ‘I forgot about you… I forgot….I haven’t got any for you.’

“At first I thought he was joking and then I realised he wasn’t. So I said, ‘OK, so what do we do here, who do we contact?’

“Every sport had its own kit so there wasn’t spare tennis kit. I managed to get a vest top from one of the girls and I managed to get a small men’s tracksuit top which was like a golf jacket and I wore my own tracksuit trousers. But what that made me feel like, again, was like I didn’t matter, I wasn’t important.

“It wasn’t in their psyche to have a female coach and I really sucked it up because of the team spirit thing - I didn’t want the girls to see a row or anything like that going on, but, internally, that was an incredibly tough thing for me and just another example of men seeing things with men’s eyes and not being used to having women in ‘their’ workforce.

“It was such a massive moment in my life to be the captain and I wanted to look the part along with the girls and I couldn’t.”

Murray’s two sons, Jamie and Andy, were part of the men’s team at the Olympics, with Andy going on to win a gold medal in the singles and silver in the mixed doubles with Laura Robson.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this article. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers.

If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription.