Athlete Jane still has a long way to go

Athlete Jane still has a long way to go
ULRIKE JOHN

HAMBURG, DECEMBER 18: The women's pole vault will debut as an Olympic sport at the 2000 Games in Sydney, followed two years later by women's bobsleigh at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. It is another sign that women's sports is catching up after a century of hardship and struggle.``Tolerated, but far from being accepted,'' said Swiss magazine Sport in 1994.

Many Muslim countries still refuse to nominate women in their teams. Algeria's world 400m hurdles champion Hassiba Boulmerka has received death threats from militant Islamic fundamentalists for running in what they consider indecent attire.

But Boulmerka is also a role model at home for aspiring athletes, just like heptathlon World record holder and Olympic champion Jackie Joyner-Kersee once was in the US.

``Women in sport get the same recognition these days, but they have to work twice as hard as a man to obtain the same recognition,'' Joyner-Kersee said at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta.

In Atlanta, only 97 of the 271 medal events werefor women. There were 163 men's and 11 mixed events. Sixty-five per cent of the athletes 6,580 were men.

The first modern Games held 1896 in Athens saw no women competitors at all. There were 11 at the next Games in 1900 in Paris, where three-times Wimbledon tennis champion Charlotte Cooper made history by winning the first Olympic gold.

Things improved with 43 women in 1908, but that year American swimmer Annette Keller was detained in Boston because her swimsuit did not cover her calves.

Things looked up for women in 1925 when Olympic founder Baron Pierre De Coubertin, who wanted to keep them out of sport, was replaced by Henri De Baillet-Latour. The showpiece sport of athletics made its debut three years later in Amsterdam, but it took another 55 years until 1983 for the last major sports federation, the World field hockey body, to merge their women's and men's organisations.

Women had to fight harder in one sport which is even more considered a domain of men football.

The first Internationalmatch was played back in 1920 between an English and a French team in front of a 61,000 crowd, almost the same number who watched the 1999 Women's World Cup final in Pasadena between the US and China.

The United States women also won the sport's first Olympic gold in 1996. Italy were the first World champions in 1991 and Germany the first European champions two years earlier in 1989. Women also have a long way ahead of them when it comes to international Sports bodies, where they are under-represented and underpaid, an international conference at Brighton in 1994 said.

After all, the 104-strong IOC had only 10 women in their ranks in early 1999. (DPA)