So very very many world championships

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3.5 million

— A record number of girls participating in high school sports, according to survey data from the 2024-25 school year. The biggest growth came in flag football, which saw a 60% increase from the previous year, and girls' wrestling.

Three big stories to know this week in women's sports

1. Highlights from the second half of the Track & Field World Championships 🏃‍♀️

On this week's podcast, we hear from the ground in Tokyo and we go deep on questions that were left unanswered out of headline reports from the sports science summit held alongside the world championship meet. (ie. News reports mixed up terms related to trans athletes, disorders of sex development, and anti-doping testosterone tests — things that are important to not mix up!)

And out of the stadium, we had a favorite moments in the the stormy rainy final days of the track & field world champs:

Melissa Jefferson-Wooden completed the rare triple crown: 100m, 200m, and 4x100m victory 🥇🥇🥇 The only other woman to do it ever? Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce!
No woman had gone under 48 seconds in the 400m in 39 years, and then two women did it in the final — led by Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in 47.78. And just think, the flat 400m is her "B" event!
Anna Hall became the first American to win the heptathlon since the legendary Jackie Joyner-Kersee 💪
🇰🇪 🇰🇪 🇰🇪 Kenya completed a wild sweep of the distance events: Winning everything from the surprise gold by Lilian Odira in the 800m to the 1500m, 5000m, 10,000m, all the way up to the marathon.
And let's just take a moment to appreciate how good Faith Kipyegon is at the 1500m, winning four world titles (and having her daughter in between) and winning every Olympic and world title from the Tokyo Games to now the Tokyo World Champs

🎉 FUN FACTS: There were 1,992 athletes — 958 of whom were women — from 193 countries + the refugee team. And 53 countries won a medal, a record number of countries getting on the podium!

📚 READ: An interesting essay from Australian runner Catriona Bisset on what the rollout of sex testing has been like for the athletes

🎧 LISTEN: All three U.S. women from the marathon team joined Des Linden and Kara Goucher for an episode from Japan

(The U.S. women topped the 4x100m and 4x400m relays. Photo: World Athletics)

2. And cycling world champs come to Rwanda

With defending time trial world and Olympic champion Grace Brown announcing she was pregnant and wouldn't be racing, the individual time trial world title was up for grabs this past weekend. And Marlen Reusser 🇨🇭 took her first rainbow stripes — covering the 31.2km course in 43:09, almost a minute ahead of Anna Van der Breggen and Demi Vollering.

The time trial, in the Rwandan capital of Kigali, was the first event of the week-long road cycling world championships. It's the first time the world championships have been held in Africa. And the first time the women have had their own U23 championship race (with Zoe Bäckstedt 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 winning the U23 time trial).

It's also blown open a whole range of questions about sportswashing in Rwanda, especially as the UCI deals with controversies coming out of the men's Vuelta. Has Rwanda effectively used international sports events for good PR, to mask human rights abuses? We discuss at length on this week's The Feist podcast, too.

🚲 Up next: On Saturday, Tour de France Femmes winner Pauline Ferrand-Prevot will attempt to put the cherry on top of a unbeatable year with a win in the world championship road race — while Demi Vollering, Marianne Vos, and Elisa Longo Borghini will try to stop her

🚲 Another world champs: The cycling track world championships will be held in Chile in October — but Lotte Kopecky said she's out after a crash

3. What to watch this weekend: Canada v. England 🏉

More than 7 million people (just on the BBC!) watched the group stages of the women's Rugby World Cup, and the semi-final between England & France drew a record 3.3 million viewers. 440,000 tickets have been sold for the tournament — three times the number of tickets at the last World Cup just three years ago — and now, after all these records, we're down to the final game!

Canada 🇨🇦 v. England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

Saturday @ 11 a.m. ET

England has lost the last two World Cup finals to New Zealand (who, this year, were beaten by Canada in the semis). England is also playing on home turf! Comparatively, the Canadian team had to crowdfund $1 million just to make it to the tournament. What makes them so good?!

Tickets for the final at the 82,000-person stadium in Twickenham sold out a month ago. In the U.S., the game will air on Paramount+

🤩 WATCH: The beauty of rugby

🎧 LISTEN: Back at the start of the tournament (!) we chatted with Canadian rugby star Liv Apps 🇨🇦

Tip of the week

While we know that resistance training is good for health outcomes in pregnancy (for both the baby and pregnant person), official recommendations have erred on the side of light strength training because of concerns that there wasn't enough research to support the safety of high-intensity training. But for active women, the 'how much is too much' question is a point of frustration.

This is why a study from earlier this year looked to measure the effects of high-intensity resistance training on maternal and fetal responses. The good news? While it was a small study, they found high-intensity resistance training was safe and well-tolerated.

Researchers looked at just 20 women — 10 who were pregnant and 10 who weren't — and asked them to perform back squats, bench presses, and deadlifts are increasing intensities. Heart rate and oxygen saturation was measured throughout, and blood pressure, glucose, and lactate before and after. Fetal heart rate did not change and umbilical blood flow remained within normal ranges. Additionally, maternal heart rate increased but remained within previously accepted safe ranges. 🏋️‍♀️

The highlight reel

🏔️ In the first ever Everesting World Championship (the act of covering the elevation of Mt. Everest by bike), Illi Gardner went up and down Mt. Etna in Sicily 7x to get 29,000ft of elevation — and also would have placed third in the men's competition. Check out her Strava.
Lauren Stephens repeated as U.S. gravel 🚲 national champion. 🇺🇸
🏃‍♀️ Kiera D'Amato set a new Masters American record in the half-marathon — running 1:09:07 in Copenhagen.
🏃‍♀️ Rosemary Wanjiru 🇰🇪 held off a closing Dera Dida 🇪🇹 by three seconds to win the Berlin Marathon. And Manuela Schär 🇨🇭 won her fifth straight Berlin title in the wheelchair race and her seventh overall.
The Boston Marathon sent out acceptance letters for the 2026 race to 24,362 runners, and athletes had to run 4 minutes, 34 seconds faster than the qualifying time for their age and gender
80-year-old Betty Kellenberger became the oldest woman to complete a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. 🥾
🏀 Elena Delle Donne was named the U.S. 3v3 women's basketball national team managing director. And Kara Lawsome was named the national team head coach through 2028.
In the semi-finals of the WNBA Playoffs (a best of five round), both series are tied up at 1-1.
⚽ The Kansas City Current clinched the NWSL Shield early in the season — the award given to the team in the league with the best season record — with a win over the Seattle Reign.
🎾 Jasmine Paolini sealed the win for Team Italy 🇮🇹 over the U.S. in the Billie Jean King Cup.
League One Volleyball (LOVB) will air on the USA network starting in January. Athlos, the women's track & field event, will air on ION this fall. And the NWSL will expand its games on CBS Sports and ESPN.
📺 The All Women's Sports Network is launching a women's sports channel in Saudi Arabia.
Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York all got their first women's sports bars.
Women's tackle football is also on the rise. 🏈
USA Cycling became the latest governing body to bans trans women from competing, effectively immediately.
A preliminary report from the Future of Sport in Canada Commission found that abuse is rampant and made 71 recommendations to enhance safe sport.

Your Feisty recommendations

🎧 What to listen to: "Are there too many world championships?!"

📚 What to read: The Stronger Sex: What Science Tells Us About the Power of the Female Body

📺 What to watch: The Girl Winter Film Tour is a collection of women ski and snowboard movies that are going on tour — get your tickets ❄️

💜 What we loved: This throwback to Olivia Vivian's historic run in Australia's Ninja Warrior

🎁 Last chance: Order your shirt in honor of the last all-women's Ironman World Championships by tomorrow — orders close Sept. 25