#Triathlon Pushing for a progressive example of gender balance in sports

On March 8, the International Women’s Day, ITU wants to celebrate and congratulate all the incredible women we have racing, coaching, officiating and leading our sport, triathlon. For us it is a great honor, as well as a pleasure, to be members of a family, the triathlon family, that provides a very progressive example of gender balance in sports. We have one of the very few sports in which, since the very beginning, men and women compete in the same distances, and prices are always the same for both male and female winners.  Since 2004, the number of women competing in ITU races all around the world is over 35% of the total competitors, and the numbers keep growing year by year. We do have countries in which the number of female elite athletes is bigger than male, such as Bermuda (59% of women) or Canada and USA, where women are 45% of the elite triathletes. Some other of our countries with higher numbers of elite triathletes have also grown the female presence on their sport, such as New Zealand (42%), Japan (42%), Russia (40%) or Australia (38%). Although those are great numbers of which we are extremely proud, there is still room to improvement, and we are working with many countries to promote women in our sport and organizing talent camps and development camps to continuously increase those numbers. “But is not only a matter of gender balance in our athletes. Equal opportunities for men and women are part of the DNA of our sport and of our constitution. ITU’s Table Officers are made up of 60% women, with the ITU President and two Vice Presidents all women. Additionally, the ITU Executive Board is nearly half women. But more importantly, currently there are more than ten National Federations that have a female as President. We also have one of our Board Members, Dr. Debbie Alexander, who has just been elected member of the IPC Board. That means that women are taking that step forward to have access to management positions within the sport world. We do have equal representation also in the Athletes commission, presided by a female former athlete, and more and more women are taking the step forward to participate in technical official courses or coaching courses, to get involved in some other ways in our sport”, said ITU President and IOC Member, Marisol Casado. “I have been involved with ITU, first as an athlete and now as chairperson of the athletes’ committee, for the last 15 years and all through that time I have been aware of... Triathlon.org News Feed http://ift.tt/2HgoMpx