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Welcome to all our new women's sports fans! This week's issue of the best in women's sports and performance is presented by Joni. Get 10% off your Joni order of sustainable period products with the code FEISTY at getjoni.com.
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"I hope my legacy is that I pushed the game forward."
- Alex Morgan, announcing her retirement from soccer this week. Morgan, who won two Olympic medals and two World Cup championships, also helped pave the way for other female athletes — fighting for equal pay and
new labor standards. She did one last ground-breaking thing this weekend: Her final game with the San Diego Wave became the first live women's sporting event to air across multiple platforms (CBS, Paramount+, NWSL+, Prime Video, ESPN, and ESPN+). It can be done!
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Three big stories to know this week in women's sports
1. Record-setting Paralympics ends with record-breaking marathon
Over 2 million Paralympics tickets were sold. Channel 4, in the UK, reported that their coverage reached 18.5 million viewers. And NBC saw a 128% increase from the Tokyo Paralympics, according to Nielsen data.
Everyone watches para-sport 🤩
But with the increased attention has come increased focus on complaints that have always sat in the background about cheating, classifications, and the lack of gender parity. (And some weird DQs.)
Plus questions of which disabilities get to be in the Paralympics anyway? When the historic focus has sometimes been on impairments that make for the most visually appealing drama...
For U.S. world record swimmer Christie Raleigh Crossley, the fact that her disability wasn't visible even led to bullying and suggestions she was faking it.
LISTEN: "The Paralympics Have A Massive Cheating Problem"
That didn't stop some amazing performances in the last few days, though:
On the final day, Morocco's Fatima Ezzahra El Idrissi broke the visually-impaired women's marathon world record (2:48:36).
Oksana Masters won her 19th Paralympic medal 😮
The U.S. women took their 3rd straight sitting volleyball title
And if you didn't catch the 4x100m Universal Relay—which requires two women and two men; and each team has to run a visually impaired runner, an amputee, an athlete with cerebral palsy or a similar balance impairment, and then a wheelchair athlete—it's worth re-watching!
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(Photo: Josephine Brueder/Ville de Paris)
2. Fashion & tennis merge at the U.S. Open
After losing to Coco Gauff in the finals last year, Aryna Sabalenka won her first U.S. Open (and third major) in just two sets over Jessica Pegula. That caps a big year for Sabalenka — even with an injury keeping her out of Wimbledon: The Australia Open, the smaller Cinnicinati Open, and now this.
Both the men's and women's winners took home a record $3.6 million. Along with equal prize money and TV time, the women's final also proved to be the place to be in New York as New York Fashion Week kicked off.
For fans, the finals turned into a kind of American fashion show — which seemed fitting at the start of a fashion week where two new women's athletic clothing brands also launched with a
high-brow high-art take on activewear.
Are women's sports and women's fashion entering their era?
3. The Cyclists' Alliance annual survey shows salaries trending up 📈
Every year the Cyclists' Alliance (TCA) — an organization that represents female professional cyclists of all kinds — releases its annual survey on the state of the peloton. It can usually be pretty grim reading.
This year's report, though, had a little bit of good news: Female cyclists' salaries have been trending up since 2018.
Other key findings in the report, which surveyed 100 female cyclists from 20 different teams and 45 different counties:
The disparity between World Tour and non-World Tour riders is growing: 27% of non-World Tour riders still receive NO salary and 55% early less than €10,000
1 in 4 riders still work a second job in addition to racing
Most concerning: 1 in 5 riders said they feel unsafe on their cycling team — and that number has doubled since last year
The most common reason to leave the sport early is that the racing is too dangerous
And remember: Even at the highest levels, Kasia Niewiadoma earned just €50,000 for her Tour de France Femmes win — 1/10th of what the male winner of the Tour de France earned.
READ: A Q&A with the president of the Cyclists' Alliance
READ: The State of Domestic Women's Off-Road Racing
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The Feist is written by Kelly O'Mara and edited by Millie Perry. Ads by Ella Hnatyshyn
Live Feisty Media Corporation, 2031 Store St #30, Victoria, British Columbia V8T 5L9, Canada
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