From Frustration to Inspiration: A year of Kyniska Advocacy

I’ll be honest, I thought it would be easy to write something to mark one year since the official launch of Kyniska Advocacy. I was wrong. I thought I should look at where female sport is today, and how that links to where it’s been and where it’s going. 

Then I thought about the extraordinary women whose actions have stood out to me over the last year. And I sat for a while with the idea of focusing on female athletes who have made headlines that have transcended sport. Despite wishing I was writing a book so that I could really go on the rant, I have finally found the direction in which I want to take this particular piece of writing. Kyniska Advocacy has given a voice to so many female athletes - myself included - over the last year, and I wanted here to capture a common feeling shared by us all. 

But what is that feeling?

Throughout my many hours of thinking about writing this, the one constant emotion which has bothered me is frustration. Whenever I feel grateful, impressed, hopeful, excited, inspired, proud....it always ends up with frustration in some way or another, which doesn’t feel right - seems a bit negative, no? I thought so, until recently I listened to ultra-runner Sophie Power talk on a podcast about how race organisers are often ignorant of females’ needs when it comes to toilets. That might seem a strange thing to catch my attention, but I was just hearing the right thing at the right time. I was cleaning hotel rooms at work, where my job is to leave the toilets spotless, in stark contrast to the image I had in my head while listening to talk of race toilets (if you know, you know). It seemed bizarre that even something as seemingly simple as appropriate toilets can’t even be provided. Suddenly I realised, hearing about Sophie’s work, that the frustration we all feel is actually one of the most powerful tools at our disposal. 

Let me explain...

Think about how you feel about the likes of the US women’s soccer team’s successful fight for equal pay; the Norwegian beach volleyball team’s defiance of the dress code by wearing shorts instead of bikinis; Lydia Ko stunning a male interviewer by mentioning her period affecting her performance; the first headline female boxing fight at Madison Square Garden in it’s 97-year history; Alyson Felix’s ongoing campaign for career protection during pregnancy; over 500 US athletes signing a letter explaining why losing the right to abortion could ruin their careers. I could go on an on, and these examples are all just from recent months. These women are incredible, right? But please, read all of it back and tell me you’re not frustrated beyond belief that they actually had to do these things. Then, ask yourself if it’s at all possible that all these phenomenal women didn’t also feel that frustration. I think not.

“You can turn the frustration into inspiration, or you can let it floor you”

You see, far more than many people like to acknowledge, females in sport are still marginalised. I won’t insult you by pointing them out - not only would that take me an extremely long time, but you’ve probably experienced that marginalisation yourself.  It’s easy to get (justifiably) frustrated at the inequalities we face; we could wait in hope that magically this will all change for us because, well, it just should. It’s infuriating, I know. But what if Billie Jean King had just sat back? What about Katherine Switzer? Where would the female sporting world be now, if all the icons who have changed the game for us all had just sat back, buried in frustration? Take the above mentioned legends King and Switzer, who were treated in a quite frankly disgusting manner (there’s my blood boiling again); they felt their frustration and acted on it, literally changing the world in the process. They asked not what sport could do for women, but instead what women could do for sport (very JFK, I know, but the guy had a good point). 

Coming back to what I’m supposed to be writing about here, take a moment to consider the Princess of Sparta, Kyniska. She was the first woman to compete in the Ancient Olympics. The OG badass of female sport, you might say. Elite Spartiate women were given freedom to excel in sport in a way that was unheard of for women anywhere else in the classical world. Thus it is hardly surprising - yet still mesmerising - that Kyniska went on to achieve what she did. This is the pioneer after whom Kyniska Advocacy is named, and the trailblazer after whom so many amazing women have followed in showing the world the power that lies in female sport. 

Speaking of badass female athletes, let’s remember how Kyniska Advocacy came about in the first place. Kate Seary and Mhairi Maclennan started the #ZeroToleranceUKA campaign to bring in lifetime bans for coaches in abuse cases. If you ask me, it’s utterly ridiculous that this did not already exist. But again we have two (to put it lightly) frustrated female athletes who took action and actually made change happen, bettering our sport for every single person. That is simply inspirational.

So, think about where female sport is today; think about where it’s been and where it’s going. Look at the exceptional women who have come before you; be in awe of their strength, courage and resilience, and feel grateful for what they have done to make sure you are playing in a more fair world than they did. Then let that frustration brew - we all feel it; there’s no getting away from it - and decide what you are going to do with it. You can turn the frustration into inspiration, or you can let it floor you. The collective strength of all the pissed-off female athletes in the world is a force to be reckoned with, and it is a force made greater by the creation of Kyniska Advocacy.