MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Fall 2018

FALL 2018 ML BLUE 33 Having a female on the team seemed to flip a switch: the next year, three more joined. In the ten years that I’ve been racing, reporting on women’s sport, managing teams that finally were starting to add women to the roster, and working on a fictional book series targeted at budding female athletes, I’ve seen some massive changes. When I went to my first practice for my cycling team, I was the only woman there, as a college sophomore. But having a female on the team seemed to flip a switch: the next year, three more joined. When I started in cycling journalism, I could point to one other female in the field. Now, women are close to outnumbering the men. I’m seeing more women added to professional teams in sports ranging from running to freestyle skiing. We may have more work to do, but slowly, women are coming to sport in a big way. The key, it seems, is offering as much visibility as possible: show that women are out there on downhill bikes, on the halfpipe on their snowboards, and speeding through the trails on foot. So, where are women in sport? They’re everywhere—and more and more are coming. You just need to look. TOP AND ABOVE GABRIEL RIVETT-CARNAC