Little wonder that sexism is so alive and well in America. We bring ‘em up that way in this country, and even in my own newspaper.
We’re following the Alpine World Championship near Vail, just like thousands of newspapers and TV stations across the country. This year, the race is in our own backyard.
Despite culling the sexes, few sports are as equitable to men and women as is extreme and competitive speed skiing. But the news coverage? Nope.
The headline for tomorrow’s main story coming out of the Associated Press sports desk?
“Vonn breaks into tears after Alpine combined at worlds”
Even Colorado cave-dwellers know who Lindsey Vonn is, Colorado’s own invincible and indomitable four-time World Cup champion and Olympic gold medalist. Not only has Vonn stunned the world with her incredible athleticism, skill and determination, she’s back on the slopes after suffering serious injuries.
During the past few days during the worlds outside of Vail, she’s has some tough breaks and some disappointing runs. They’re runs, however, that are still better than just about every speed skier on the planet. This is a driven athlete who has leveraged her passion and skill in every competition she’s been in to win. I can’t even imagine the pressure.
But as a man, I can assure you if it were me in her position, and away from talking tough in front of the cameras I started crying in front of my coach and friends, the press would probably either ignore it, or the headline would read that I’d become “emotional.” Check out stories about weepy athletes like Roger Federer, Michael Jordan, Bret Favre and Terrell Owens, all famous athletes who became emotional, usually on national television.
In the American press, after all these years, after all we were indoctrinated with in journalism school, after all a lot of us have fought for, after it looks like the next president of the United States is going to be a woman, men still “get emotional” and women still “break down in tears.”
Who’s writing and editing the sports world these days? Oscar Madison? John Inverdale? Howard Cosell?
Here’s what the Associated Press came up with:
Lindsey Vonn smiled and waved to the hometown crowd after finishing a run that didn’t count.
Out of view, she broke into tears. All the pent-up pressure from being the favorite at the world championships boiled over after she straddled a gate in the slalom portion of the Alpine combined Monday, knocking her out of the race.
That she cried under so much pressure hardly makes her less an athlete or more a female or anything else, other than a human. That it becomes the focus of a story, and that she “broke into tears,” rather than cried or became emotional or even viscerally upset, is what shocks me.
This woman, and her peers, perform superhuman feats every time they leave the gate. You may think you can imagine what Vonn’s level of skiing is like, and you’d be wrong. It’s fantastically dangerous, difficult and demanding, probably unlike any other sport on the planet. She travels on the edges of skis on grueling mountains in thin air at speeds that make plenty of people uncomfortable inside of cars. Over and over and over. I’d cry every time. All the time.
Vonn, like so many athletes before her, no doubt shed tears today after a discouraging week, but I have no doubt she’s never once in her ski life “broke down.” And had she been a man, the press wouldn’t have reported that today.