TRIGGERnometry - July 19, 2023


Olympian Sharron Davies - The Fight for Women’s Sport

Topics
resilience in sport
Hosted by
Francis Foster Konstantin Kisin
Mentioned
Sean Davis Michael Phelps Leah Thomas Mark Petroni Michael Jordan Katie Ledecky Derek Redmond Unfair Play Simon Evans Lourdes Biden
Triggernometry Employee Speaks Out - Sophie Spital The Case Against Democracy - Curtis Yarvin

Episode Stats


Length

47 minutes

Words per minute

210.23

Word count

9,995

Sentence count

241

Harmful content

Misogyny

50

sentences flagged

Toxicity

6

sentences flagged

Hate speech

29

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Sharon Davis is a former professional swimmer who won a silver medal competing for Great Britain at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. She also won a Commonwealth medal in the 1500m and a Gold medal at the Commonwealth Games in 1992 and a Commonwealth Gold at the 1992 London Olympics in which she became the first British woman to swim at the Olympics. In this episode, she talks about her career, her family life and her thoughts on women in sport.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 What we find is that women remove themselves. 1.00
00:00:03.000 If you have a parent that turns up with their daughter to play a rugby game
00:00:06.000 and they recognise that there's a male on the opposite team,
00:00:09.000 the parent will remove their child.
00:00:11.000 Understandably.
00:00:12.000 Yeah, exactly.
00:00:13.000 I'm a sensible dad, I do not want my daughter having her neck broken,
00:00:16.000 I'm taking her off the field. 0.99
00:00:18.000 And one of the things I find the most heartbreaking
00:00:20.000 is that we've had a massive increase in primary schools,
00:00:23.000 now just having sports days, which are mixed sex.
00:00:26.000 I've lost count the number of parents that have contacted me
00:00:29.000 with their 11-year-old daughter who's come back from sports day
00:00:32.080 and said, not a single little girl won a race today.
00:00:34.660 Do you sometimes pinch yourself?
00:00:39.120 Yeah, all the time.
00:00:40.160 Every day I wake up and go, how are we here?
00:00:42.340 How has this happened?
00:00:43.860 We turn around and say that we have to pretend somebody is a woman. 0.84
00:00:48.100 Then what's next?
00:00:49.320 Are people going to say that they're 10 years older or 10 years younger?
00:00:52.900 There's got to be reality and truth.
00:00:54.720 I worry terribly about free press and free speech.
00:00:59.680 And, you know, if we lose free speech, we lose democracy.
00:01:12.480 Hello and welcome to Trigonometry.
00:01:15.280 I'm Francis Foster.
00:01:16.440 I'm Constantine Kishin.
00:01:17.600 And this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people.
00:01:22.560 Our brilliant guest today is a former professional swimmer who won a silver medal competing for
00:01:27.000 this country, Great Britain. Sharon Davis, welcome to Trigonometry.
00:01:29.920 Thank you very much. Nice to be here.
00:01:31.340 Oh, it's so good to have you on. I've been meaning to have you on the show for a while.
00:01:34.340 You've been saying your opinion about interesting things. So we wanted to talk to you about that.
00:01:38.600 Before we do, though, who are you? How are you, where you are? What has been the journey
00:01:42.660 through life that brings you to be here talking to us?
00:01:45.200 Gosh, it's a long journey. So I did my first Olympic Games when I was 13,
00:01:48.300 which was um yeah nearly nearly 50 odd years ago now and uh my my whole career really i suppose
00:01:55.060 has been swimming in olympic games and every four years i get to do another one so i've done
00:01:58.680 30 or 13 will be paris um so you know sort of four-year increments obviously won my silver
00:02:04.860 medal in moscow that you mentioned but obviously commonwealth medals european medals world medals
00:02:08.740 all the different medals on the way but much of my youth being in a swimming pool smelling of
00:02:13.120 chlorine very very clean child and then I went to university in America after I won my my silver
00:02:20.360 because there was nothing really in this country there's no lottery funding in those days so it
00:02:24.040 was either the dole or the universities in America but to maintain my scholarship I needed to swim
00:02:28.860 and I just needed a break you know I needed six months off from doing six hours a day of training
00:02:32.880 and to be an 18 year old for a little while and that wasn't really allowed and I did a tv program
00:02:37.060 called give us a clue which you won't remember because you're well too young but um it was just
00:02:41.060 a quiz show, got paid 40 quid and got branded a professional and wasn't allowed to compete
00:02:45.840 anymore. So I spent eight years away kind of working in television and doing all sorts
00:02:50.180 of different things. And then I was at the Olympic Games in Seoul with Mary Peters sharing
00:02:54.300 a flat. And Mary said, don't spend the rest of your life saying what if. So at this stage
00:02:58.080 I was like 28, 29. And I thought, well, if I don't do it now, I'll never be able to do
00:03:02.560 it. So I got back in the water and made another Olympics and won a few more Commonwealth medals
00:03:06.340 and then met Derek Redman at the Olympic Games in 92
00:03:10.800 when he pulled his hamstring.
00:03:12.100 Oh, that video has done trillions of views
00:03:17.620 and I cannot watch it without crying.
00:03:19.860 I know.
00:03:20.300 And it's very authentic.
00:03:21.420 That's the thing, you know.
00:03:22.320 It really is.
00:03:22.800 How has Dad ever got out of the crowd?
00:03:24.180 I will never know.
00:03:25.520 Because, I mean, security, as you'd imagine,
00:03:27.200 at the Olympics is quite intense.
00:03:29.680 And we just ended up sitting on a beach that night
00:03:31.840 and he was saying I was running so well
00:03:33.300 and then I pulled my hamstring and I was going,
00:03:34.860 I'm swimming so well.
00:03:35.700 and then I did my best swims at training camp
00:03:37.640 and then we got together after that and we have two kids.
00:03:41.080 We're not together now, but we're still good friends.
00:03:43.820 And then I've got a little one as well who's 16.
00:03:46.160 So that's kind of my sporting career.
00:03:48.660 The rest of it is kind of working in television,
00:03:50.680 working for the BBC poolside.
00:03:52.240 I get to take a microphone in front of all the swimmers,
00:03:54.080 which is just the best job in the world.
00:03:57.740 Yeah, and just recently written my book, Unfair Play,
00:04:00.540 about the challenges to women's sport, which has always been there.
00:04:03.420 No, because obviously I was competing during the East German era.
00:04:06.120 So I won an awful lot of silver and bronze medals behind East Germans. 0.72
00:04:09.380 And that was allowed to go on for 20 years.
00:04:11.500 Tell people more about that, because the younger audience may not be familiar.
00:04:14.720 Frances and I joke about it because I'm from Russia
00:04:17.060 and this sort of Russian, Eastern German cheating and all of that is kind of in our DNA.
00:04:22.740 But tell us more, because people may not be familiar with this.
00:04:25.120 What were the challenges to competition for women like you and others in the past? 1.00
00:04:30.160 Yeah, so during the 70s and the 80s, the old East Germany basically were putting an awful lot of nasty steroids, 0.99
00:04:38.520 testosterone into their young girls as a programme really to win in sport.
00:04:42.920 They totally dominated in the women's events, obviously, because what they could do was they could create a sort of a male puberty 1.00
00:04:48.440 by giving these young girls these terrible drugs from about 11, and with massive side effects.
00:04:53.660 Many of them have been really poorly, some have even died.
00:04:56.320 This was allowed to go on for a very long time.
00:04:59.300 The girl that beat me was from East Germany. 1.00
00:05:01.500 I've met her since and she's got liver problems and kidney problems 0.96
00:05:04.680 and fertility problems and all sorts of things.
00:05:06.640 They had big court cases when the war came down in 89.
00:05:09.780 We were all very aware of it at the time.
00:05:11.940 You knew it was happening?
00:05:12.860 Oh, yes.
00:05:13.340 I mean, because they would turn up, you know, at a major competition.
00:05:16.620 We'd never seen them before.
00:05:18.600 They would look and sound like men.
00:05:20.260 They had deep voices and, you know, shadows on their chins,
00:05:23.780 bless them, and bad skin and male physique. 0.97
00:05:27.040 and they swam like males you know they would do male equivalent times um then they disappear again
00:05:33.380 and we'd see another one at the next major competition you know and they would have no
00:05:37.360 hardly any success in the men's races and this massive success in the women's races so
00:05:41.600 at european level they won 92 percent of the women's medals throughout that whole period of
00:05:46.720 time and practically none in the men's and the ilc went well they're not doing anything
00:05:50.780 and it was really really frustrating i mean really frustrating and i suppose that's why
00:05:56.420 I speak out now it's the biggest reason I speak out now because I had friends that came forth
00:06:01.180 behind three East Germans and their whole lives would have been different if they'd been Olympic 0.94
00:06:04.720 champions and you use that term really frustrating but it's it's more than that isn't it Sharon
00:06:11.220 surely you know you've dedicated your life to this your childhood you every day eight hours a day and
00:06:17.720 all of a sudden somebody cheats yeah it's more than frustrating isn't it it's the injustice of
00:06:23.080 it I suppose it was the injustice of it for all of us because even at the time we knew that they
00:06:27.360 weren't doing it kind of I I'm reluctant to say not knowing because I think they must have known
00:06:34.000 something was going on then their bodies were changing their voices were changing you know
00:06:37.360 they're going to ask questions they're not stupid however there was very little they could do about
00:06:42.160 it so they weren't in a position where they could control it because what we showed I did a
00:06:46.300 documentary um a few years ago and we went to the Stasi files and and we could see that they were
00:06:52.000 making about a nine percent improvement so you could take a very average swimmer a female swimmer 1.00
00:06:56.540 if you make you know nine percent improvement you make them world record holders so they had this
00:07:00.380 total you know they had an infinite number of young girls they could just move into the system 1.00
00:07:05.420 fill them full of these terrible drugs and have them as world champions so they didn't need to 0.99
00:07:09.440 look after their best swimmers because they had a train of just young girls you know that they
00:07:13.740 were removing from their families and putting them into training programs so it was horrendous what
00:07:18.940 was done and you know there's there was always two victims there was the victims that were cheated
00:07:22.960 like myself and my friends um and there were these young girls that were incredibly badly let down
00:07:27.720 you know by the IOC and why didn't the IOC get involved then why did they not because if it was
00:07:32.300 as clear as day and it was really does sound like it why did they not do something and they've still
00:07:36.380 done nothing now so we've had all the evidence we've got all the paperwork we had Germans they 0.97
00:07:41.740 had court cases where I think 25 million euros were given out in compensation we've had um you
00:07:47.560 You know, admissions of guilt, I've got admissions of guilt
00:07:49.520 from the young woman that beat me on tape,
00:07:52.520 but IOC will still do nothing.
00:07:55.520 And you just kind of, you just, I find it beggar's belief
00:07:59.020 when they're supposed to be promoting fair sport, you know.
00:08:01.860 Sharon, talk to us about your friends,
00:08:03.680 and obviously you don't have to go into, you know,
00:08:05.640 personal details if you don't want to,
00:08:07.080 but I think one of the things that often gets missed
00:08:09.500 in this whole conversation is what sort of impact
00:08:12.540 in a competitive environment where it's not a percentage thing,
00:08:16.060 It's not like, well, you know, this person got promoted unfairly and they get 3% more money and you don't.
00:08:22.000 It's like you either won or you didn't.
00:08:24.240 And the gap between those two is, as you say, life changing.
00:08:28.320 Yeah, it's absolutely the commercial gap between being an Olympic champion and being fourth
00:08:33.120 and no one ever remembering who you were is huge.
00:08:36.200 You know, it's absolutely huge. It's totally life changing.
00:08:38.820 And so it's that ability to have that opportunity, which I was not prepared to let happen all over again.
00:08:45.520 the same end result in the fact that male puberty is enabling someone to have an advantage
00:08:50.500 you know one was artificial with the east german system one is a natural process now
00:08:55.700 and i just thought i can't let this happen again i can't sit by and watch a whole another generation
00:09:00.000 of young girls miss out and it's worse really because in lots of ways with the transgender 1.00
00:09:03.900 argument is um you've got all of the pathways you've got all of the master's events you've got
00:09:09.120 it across every sport across every country whereas in my day it was just at elite level
00:09:13.780 and it was just predominantly in say swimming rowing and track and field you know it wasn't
00:09:19.160 going to affect the british national championships or the american european you know college trials
00:09:23.460 or any of those things whereas now it's affecting all young women across the whole world they're not
00:09:28.080 getting their opportunities to their success and it might be an olympic medal which is huge or it
00:09:33.500 might just be the fact that you make it to the national the nc2as and you get to put this on
00:09:37.300 your you know on your cv for the rest of your life which opens a door for you when you're going for a
00:09:41.740 job application they're losing those opportunities and that's not fair and of course in america
00:09:47.700 just to flesh that point out a little bit because of the way the whole sporting and college system
00:09:53.240 are linked you could you could get to college that you might not be able to afford and get a
00:09:59.720 really good education based on your athletic performance and yet here you are competing with
00:10:06.380 people who are male-bodied to put it very which is the truth the truth is that they are male-bodied 0.87
00:10:11.460 then that will never change their biological sex will always be male no matter how much
00:10:15.180 testosterone they reduce no matter how much plastic surgery they might choose to have
00:10:18.520 and again that doesn't happen in sport they don't have plastic surgery they don't have genitals
00:10:22.980 removed you know and in a lot of cases they try to reduce testosterone for incredibly short periods
00:10:27.680 of time uh like leo thomas you know with the nc2as leo was asked to reduce her testosterone levels to 1.00
00:10:33.760 10 nanomals of testosterone per litre well that's 10 times what i have and that was only for one
00:10:38.940 year. I mean, so the difference is just ridiculous. That person goes from being 460th in America,
00:10:46.420 not in the world. In the world, they would be not in the top 2,000. In America, 200th to being
00:10:51.660 number one and beating three American silver medalists in the space of a year. So, I mean,
00:10:56.460 a very mediocre male athlete becomes a very elite female athlete. And all those elite female
00:11:00.880 athletes that spent 10 years of their life making huge sacrifices are just expected to step aside.
00:11:07.200 And Sharon, when was the first moment you thought, we've got a problem here?
00:11:12.020 It's been in the background for a while.
00:11:15.100 Up until 2015, the IOC allowed males to identify females
00:11:19.740 if they had got a certificate and had had genital surgery.
00:11:24.600 In 2015, it changed.
00:11:26.720 And it's got progressively worse.
00:11:28.180 I mean, to the point now where the IOC don't even suggest
00:11:31.080 that anyone reduces testosterone.
00:11:32.400 they just say you're not supposed to suggest that anyone that's biologically male has an advantage
00:11:38.300 well that is the most ludicrous thing to say because we have men and women's races
00:11:42.020 so if there's no advantage why are we having men and women's races why don't we just have 100 1.00
00:11:46.340 meters on the track you know we know why because we have two sexes and so therefore to offer 0.81
00:11:52.000 opportunity across society we have all these different types of categories and that's not
00:11:56.440 just male female that's age categories that's power classifications that's weight categories
00:12:01.600 in boxing it's all sorts of different categories to offer fair opportunity across society and did
00:12:08.320 in 2015 did the IOC actually give an explanation because we all know the IOC is how can I put it
00:12:13.760 a little bit murky let's say because we don't want to be sued by them they're a little bit
00:12:17.380 murky with their practices allegedly yeah we go down that route no not really I mean I think
00:12:24.720 their problem is they're just they're just worried about being sued they're more interested in the
00:12:29.200 politics and the funding i mean i don't understand how an organization's sole job is to offer you
00:12:35.080 know fair sports just decided that women's sport didn't deserve to be fair anymore do you
00:12:41.660 sometimes pinch yourself yeah all the time every day i wake up and go how are we here
00:12:48.640 how has this happened why has this happened who's allowed this to happen you know it just does not
00:12:55.100 makes and how is everybody so scared when not a single piece of science backs up the inclusion
00:13:01.840 of anyone that's gone through male puberty into women's sport as being fair we've got 18 studies
00:13:07.280 in the world the last came out of brazil in september of last year one of the biggest
00:13:10.900 and that showed even after 14 years of reducing testosterone we still had no parity between people
00:13:16.480 that were male or female there was still hardly any loss of advantage so you know there's not a
00:13:21.220 single piece of study that's that supports that inclusion and yet here we are it's funny you say
00:13:26.100 that because we just had the comedian simon evans on the show who he in his latest show he talked
00:13:32.040 about uh having problems with his testosterone levels and he had to get testosterone replacement
00:13:38.480 and when he was at his bottom he qualified to compete in women's competitions and you just go
00:13:46.460 this doesn't make any sense it makes no sense and it's also like you know like boiling an egg
00:13:51.040 so once someone who's male's gone through puberty you can't unboil that egg right so reducing
00:13:56.480 testosterone doesn't make any difference and it might mean you don't get any bigger or any faster
00:14:01.620 but then it's all relative to how much training you do anyway so if you or how much injury you've
00:14:06.060 got all sorts of different variables you know that are involved in someone's physical performance and
00:14:11.560 whether they're you know a scale of one to ten um and yeah just suppressing testosterone in no shape
00:14:19.720 form you know makes it fair competition so you said where did this come from how did this come
00:14:25.700 about who let it happen do you have any thoughts on that um i have a lot of thoughts i mean i try
00:14:33.460 to concentrate on sport because it's what i know i know 50 years of you know being involved in elite
00:14:38.860 sport i know inside out back to front i've spoken to a lot of scientists a lot of extremely well
00:14:43.500 known very successful scientists um and people that know what they're talking about it's important
00:14:47.920 to know the background of all of that I try very hard to just stick to this area because it's you
00:14:53.320 know what it's like it's a minefield out there okay and I want people to to listen respectfully
00:14:58.780 to what I'm saying and that's the reason I did the book because I wanted to put all of the evidence
00:15:02.900 all of the gotchas all of the science into one place that people that want to try and fight this
00:15:07.960 and fight for their daughters and their sisters and you know for their friends to have fair sport
00:15:12.200 where they could have it a bit like an encyclopedia and they could go to and they could get all of
00:15:15.800 that information and also wanted to show the correlation between the east german era and what
00:15:20.580 happened and why that happened because of artificial testosterone and to show the similarities
00:15:26.640 you know of what will happen again if we turn around and allow unfair sport and i've you know
00:15:33.220 i was in the lucky position i suppose where i could afford to take a bit of a hit and i have
00:15:38.800 seriously taken a hit but i felt that it was really worth it you know i wouldn't be able to
00:15:42.280 live with myself if I didn't so Sharon and you've mentioned about the science and we've touched on
00:15:47.400 it a little bit so let's do a deep dive into it what is the difference between someone like a
00:15:52.420 Leah Thomas and someone like a Riley Gaines yeah good good good knowledge I like it so Riley and
00:16:00.260 and Leah tied for fifth place and and that's where Riley's got all this bravery from because she was 0.98
00:16:06.500 asked to literally not accept her trophy and was told that the trophy could go to Leah and Riley
00:16:10.740 would have to wait for hers you know and and i think she and i'm so proud of her for doing that
00:16:15.480 because it's really hard as a competing athlete to come at the beginning of your career when
00:16:19.220 you can be blacklisted so bad to go forward in your career i mean the university was horrendous
00:16:24.480 it blackmailed all its athletes who were being asked to train change next to a six foot four
00:16:29.460 biologically male with full male genitalia and were told that they would be sent to a psychiatrist 0.71
00:16:35.080 if they complained that's what the university of pennsylvania said wow yeah that's like so that's
00:16:41.500 the stuff they used to do in the soviet union is like if you don't agree with us you go to the
00:16:45.260 psych hospital yeah that's insane yeah it's insane it's seriously insane it's so depressing
00:16:50.780 that that was what came out of america that you know it really is and so riley's been very brave
00:16:56.000 to come forward and to speak um the difference at olympic level in sport is between about 10 and 30
00:17:02.460 percent. So something like middle distance running is 10 percent. Weightlifting is up there at 30
00:17:08.920 percent. So the more explosive an event is, the more the difference between male and female
00:17:14.060 biology. Something like high jump, long jump, quite explosive, about 20, 22 percent. A male of equal
00:17:20.340 weight will hit 160 percent harder than a female. And that's onto a female bone structure, which is 1.00
00:17:26.520 less dense. Women have a bigger cue angle because of the size of our hips. So that means that we 1.00
00:17:32.420 end up with six times more knee injuries than things like football because we obviously have
00:17:36.300 this angle but it means that a male will have more ability to put power through their legs on things 0.99
00:17:41.020 like sprinting on striding on a bike in particular it's a big advantage so these are all things that
00:17:45.660 reducing testosterone makes no difference to whatsoever so it's um it's it's massive you know
00:17:50.580 when you think that um the nine percent that these german women meant that they were unbelievably 0.95
00:17:55.300 dominant to the point of 92 percent of all the european medals and not 10 is the lowest that
00:18:01.200 we've got you know presently between male and female performance um yeah i mean it's it's
00:18:06.800 catastrophic it means that half a length of the pool and olympic medals are won by hundreds of
00:18:10.820 a second so and also as well there's a lung capacity issue as well yeah lung capacity
00:18:16.320 hemoglobin levels hands feet you know leo thomas six foot four huge great hands huge great feet
00:18:21.880 those are your paddles so you know all of those things yes there is the odd very tall female but 1.00
00:18:27.920 it's you know six foot four in swimming for a man is fairly average that's not average for a woman 1.00
00:18:32.780 the women is about six foot we're a tall breed I mean each sport let's be honest you've only got 1.00
00:18:36.500 to look at the olympic games you know you don't get six foot four gymnasts you don't get you know
00:18:40.680 four foot six basketball players or volleyball players so so to be the best in the world your
00:18:44.900 physiology has pretty much got to be right to do that sport um so yes swimmers are fairly tall but
00:18:50.520 we're not that tall you know women are on the whole about five i'm five ten so five ten five 1.00
00:18:55.160 11 6 for most sprinter female sprinters will be around that um distance swimmers can be a little 1.00
00:19:00.020 bit shorter but the guys are often 6 4 6 5 6 6. And why is it that female female athletes I mean 1.00
00:19:11.340 there are some Riley Gaines is a great example of this haven't stood up and gone
00:19:15.080 to be brutally honest this is taking the piss um unfortunately a lot of them are made to sign
00:19:22.080 contracts. So they have contracts with their governing bodies, which are their associations,
00:19:27.460 and that doesn't enable them to say anything that the association thinks would be derogative or
00:19:32.580 would cause problems for them. We also have contracts with their sponsors. So again,
00:19:38.420 that would stipulate the same sort of things. It's made very plain to them that it's not
00:19:45.300 recommended that they speak out. And so that's why it's really important that we have these
00:19:49.140 anonymous polls but it took seven years for any governing body to ask a female athlete how they
00:19:54.360 felt about enabling males to be in their races and you alluded to the some of the things you've
00:20:01.480 lost for speaking about this issue can you talk a little bit about that and because i think it
00:20:06.720 ties into why you're in a much more comfortable position you you can't have your potential dream
00:20:12.520 of an olympic medal taken away you've been there you've done it yeah etc but for these young women
00:20:17.580 there's that punishment so what's happened with you first of all um just a loss of work you know
00:20:22.720 trans activists are can be very vicious they will literally find out where you're working who you're
00:20:28.700 working with and just attack and attack and attack and ring and ring and phone and send letters and
00:20:33.780 just do everything in their power to make it very difficult for companies to work with you
00:20:37.740 because companies at the end they just don't want the agro in most cases you know so if it's going
00:20:42.020 to be between me or three other famous british female athletes they'll pick somebody else because 1.00
00:20:46.180 they just don't want the aggro um so and then i had charities that they did exactly the same
00:20:50.800 to charities that i've worked with for 30 years um yeah they just made my life hell i mean the
00:20:56.700 worst one is when they attack my family you know because at the end of the day i suppose that's my
00:21:01.260 biggest soft spot is my kids i love them to pieces and i would you know die for them like all of us
00:21:06.060 would but um most of the time it's it's it's vile misogyny and I my mum sadly died about four years
00:21:18.400 ago and she left me the money which has kept me going and I look at I think to my mum my mum was
00:21:23.340 looking down on me now she would be very proud of me I mean I remember having a conversation with my
00:21:26.920 mum when she bought her first house with my dad and she wasn't allowed to be on the mortgage
00:21:30.880 because only my dad could be on the mortgage.
00:21:34.260 So my mum's generation and my grandmother's generation
00:21:37.040 were the ones that fought for us to have the equality that we have today.
00:21:41.860 And I just think at the moment we're going backwards
00:21:43.580 with regards to women's rights.
00:21:45.180 And the misogyny that seems to be around in the world at the moment
00:21:48.360 is just extraordinary and every day it gets worse.
00:21:50.740 Well, and that's the thing because I think, you know,
00:21:53.900 there are elements that sometimes people throw that word around
00:21:57.100 where it doesn't really apply.
00:21:58.680 We sometimes exaggerate.
00:22:00.000 But on this issue, I have to observe that women who speak up seem to get way, way, way worse treatment than men do.
00:22:09.480 Like, I know lots of men who've made the points that you've made as stridently.
00:22:15.360 You are very diplomatic, actually, about it.
00:22:18.200 More stridently, and they don't have half the nonsense that you get.
00:22:22.460 Why do you think that is?
00:22:24.620 Because I think it's mainly males that do the attacking.
00:22:28.820 it's mainly males that sit at home on their you know on their social media or um are ringing 0.75
00:22:34.220 companies up it's it's this this misogyny it is there is no other word and i'm like you i i hate 0.69
00:22:39.820 using words you know like racist and misogynist or bully unless it really applies because i think
00:22:44.640 all we ever do otherwise is dumb down these words but at the moment these words are just used to
00:22:49.000 beat everybody over the head to silence everybody constantly you know and and and it's we're just
00:22:54.800 living in such strange times and i worry terribly about free press and and free speech and you know
00:23:01.800 if we lose free speech we lose democracy because democracy is based on free speech it's that
00:23:05.860 ability to be able to tell to speak at to have a platform and for people to say that's rubbish
00:23:10.080 but we need to be able to say it in the first place and let's delve into this you say viral
00:23:15.540 misogyny and i think it's really important that people actually understand what you mean by that
00:23:19.740 because there'll probably be people at home going oh he's being oversensitive blah blah blah so
00:23:24.240 So let's, what do we mean by that?
00:23:25.600 Well, sport is particularly run by men as well.
00:23:27.740 So in a lot of cases, particularly misogynistic sports
00:23:29.980 like cycling and cricket, they're two of the worst sports
00:23:32.360 that have literally just turned around in cricket
00:23:34.440 in this country, self-ID.
00:23:35.940 So all you have to do as a male to play on the women's cricket team
00:23:38.700 is go, I'm a woman.
00:23:40.520 That's it.
00:23:44.260 I mean, that's how crazy it is as far as the ECB is concerned.
00:23:49.140 That's how little regard they have for their women cricketers. 1.00
00:23:51.780 I mean, women cricketers have never even played a test at Lourdes in this country.
00:23:57.240 So, and then cycling, again, a very misogynistic sport.
00:23:59.720 Wasn't, you know, cycling wasn't even in the Olympics for women until the 1980s. 0.87
00:24:04.060 So the book, you know, and then some of the things, I found the book quite extraordinary
00:24:06.860 because I'm doing so much research and it had to be so carefully reffed, obviously,
00:24:11.520 and very legally read and so on and so forth.
00:24:14.000 But, you know, in the 1980s, when I was competing, there wasn't a single female sitting on the IOC committees.
00:24:19.260 you know so and again even today the females that we have sitting on the IOC committees are from the 1.00
00:24:24.700 Middle East who aren't even in most cases doing women's sport because they're not allowed to 0.98
00:24:29.900 I mean you know it's just it's crazy so unfortunately that's the problem a lot of
00:24:34.960 sports are run by men who don't have the same value of women's sports as women do if this was 0.95
00:24:40.720 a problem which was affecting male sport men's sport it would be sorted out if you remember the
00:24:44.800 situation we have with the costumes a few years ago you know they brought these suits out and they
00:24:48.960 were making a vast difference and Michael Phelps went I'm not racing anymore unless you get rid
00:24:52.480 of these suits it was sorted out within a few months and again with the shoes when they brought
00:24:56.340 out the carbon shoes you know again it was sorted out very quickly when Oster Pistorius said I want
00:25:01.380 to race with the guys with my blades they went no because they might have got beaten so you know
00:25:05.700 it gets sorted the moment affects men's sport but with women's sport let's just we'll just let it go
00:25:12.340 because it keeps all this political people happy and it keeps all the PC brigade happy and so
00:25:15.740 they've literally kicked women's sport to the side and not given it the same respect that they give
00:25:20.880 men's sport and at the moment you know the thing that i always say is that presently we are literally
00:25:26.640 saying to our female athletes you are not worthy of fair sport and do you think it's misogyny but 1.00
00:25:32.620 also do you think partly it's money in that they make a lot more for male sports male male athletes
00:25:39.480 tend to be on the whole bigger stars they generate more advertising income etc etc so when michael
00:25:45.320 phelps goes i ain't doing it i mean not in swimming they say not in swimming because yeah
00:25:49.800 michael phelps is a big star but then so is katie ledecky now so you know in swimming we have a
00:25:56.700 sport where men and women race together we train together and we have the same olympic games and
00:26:00.500 we're on the same program and the television cameras are watching the women's race and then
00:26:03.660 they're watching the men's race exactly the same as they do with track and field so yes you have
00:26:07.460 the big stars but things like football rugby cricket yeah they all you know very male dominated
00:26:12.240 big airtime big money massive money in football i mean outrageous you know money in football
00:26:16.680 about 11 000 men earn a living from professional sport in england great britain at the moment
00:26:22.600 1 000 women so we already have a much smaller piece of the cake you know our cake is tiny in 0.97
00:26:27.680 comparison with to what men get and now we're being told we can't even have that well right i
00:26:32.200 mean the piece of the cake thing is you know it's irrelevant to what you're talking about which is
00:26:38.780 fair play right i mean the i was never a professional athlete obviously so i'm telling
00:26:44.600 you things you already know but it's like the whole point of sport is that it's about fair play
00:26:51.440 and you see who's best on the merit that's the whole point that's why people love it that's why
00:26:55.480 people watch it that's why people part it there's a purity to it that's the beauty of sport isn't it
00:27:00.940 fair that's the whole part i mean to be honest with you fair should be across life shouldn't it
00:27:04.440 you know sport often is just an analogy for life you know and I and you know when I was working
00:27:09.540 and I still do work and work has definitely got a bit better over the last year but I used to do a
00:27:13.980 lot of motivational and corporate work talking about how sport and business were very similar
00:27:18.120 you know it's about the hard work it's about the preparation it's about your team support the
00:27:21.740 people behind you looking after your team you know and setting targets and focus and all these things
00:27:26.000 that apply to life in general and resilience you know we have our kids are not very resilient and
00:27:31.640 And so sport is really important, not only for health and fitness
00:27:35.080 and fighting obesity, but also for resilience, for mental health.
00:27:38.920 And it's a real trick that's being missed at the moment
00:27:41.000 with regards to, you know, trying to help our youth
00:27:43.320 who have these increasing mental health issues constantly.
00:27:47.100 Resilience is probably what I got out of sport racing,
00:27:50.200 those East Germans, for all those years.
00:27:51.680 And here I am now, you know, being resilient.
00:27:54.380 Yeah, absolutely.
00:27:55.240 And it teaches kids a very important, two very important lessons.
00:27:59.760 One is to win with dignity.
00:28:01.220 Yes.
00:28:01.640 which, you know. And to lose with grace. And to lose with grace, absolutely. And to accept loss.
00:28:06.300 And you see a lot of people who are my age or even older, and you'd see them lose,
00:28:10.320 even win, and you go, there's not a lot of dignity here. Yeah, I mean, I think what sport
00:28:15.740 teaches you as well is it teaches you that you actually learn from your failures. You know,
00:28:21.080 you mustn't be afraid of failing because failing teaches us a lesson. So then we go home, okay,
00:28:25.960 why did I fail? How do I make it better? What preparation, what hard work do I need to do
00:28:31.020 to get better and i think again we kid love a lot of our kids and the fact they're never allowed to
00:28:36.820 fail we're frightened if they fail but actually we're not doing them any favors by not allowing
00:28:41.340 them to fail you know it's a lovely chinese proverb that says fall over nine times get up you
00:28:45.980 know get up 10 and and that's yeah that's really important that ability to get back up and go again
00:28:51.320 and what is the ioc's explanation for why they're allowing this what is they don't there isn't one
00:28:58.220 what is the you know the trans activists what's their argument what is the what do they say their
00:29:04.120 argument is if a trans woman says they're a woman they're a woman and so therefore they should be 1.00
00:29:07.720 able to compete in the women's competition and my answer will be well let's read let's rename the
00:29:11.500 category then let's go natal female and open and so my answer to the whole problem is go we'll have
00:29:16.920 a female protected classification which is biological female and we have an open and
00:29:21.240 inclusive category for everybody however you would like to identify and i'm not transphobic i have i
00:29:26.600 have friends that have you know two trans two transgender daughters and i'm a great believer
00:29:32.840 that people should be able to express themselves however they they want to with safety and dignity
00:29:36.960 100 however there has to be fairness for everybody across society and you can't just trump it all by
00:29:43.360 just going well because i say i'm this i am this you know and what worries me is where does this
00:29:47.140 stop if we turn around and say that we have to pretend somebody is a woman and i my definition
00:29:53.920 if one was adult human female, then what's next?
00:29:58.820 You know, are people going to say that they're 10 years older
00:30:00.860 or 10 years younger or different, you know?
00:30:04.820 There's got to be reality and truth.
00:30:07.400 But so the thing we need to do is to respect people
00:30:10.020 that are transgender women and transgender men.
00:30:12.320 You know, that's what we need to do.
00:30:14.640 In sport, it's quite fascinating because if we have a transgender man, 1.00
00:30:17.740 so a biological female that wants to compete, i.e. the NC2As, 1.00
00:30:21.320 which is the college championships in America,
00:30:23.600 same thing that Leo Thomas competed in,
00:30:25.600 that transgender man still opted to race with the women, 0.78
00:30:28.800 which providing they're not on testosterone, 0.52
00:30:30.820 nobody has a problem with.
00:30:32.800 So if women can say, you identify however you like,
00:30:36.000 and providing you're not taking illegal drugs,
00:30:37.820 come race with us, and we will respect you,
00:30:40.560 why can't that happen in men's races just the same?
00:30:43.240 Well, this is the point I've made.
00:30:44.380 I have a friend who's a former semi-professional boxer, female,
00:30:47.700 and we were talking about this, and I was sort of saying,
00:30:50.060 like we have a word for injecting substances into your body that enhances your performance
00:30:55.060 there's a word for that and whatever motivation you have for doing it is irrelevant because it
00:31:00.460 enhances your performance right it seems like a pretty basic concept that people would understand
00:31:06.460 do you feel that there is progress being made on this issue we have seen some changes around
00:31:12.360 the edges certain competitions certain athletes there has been yeah definitely it's taken quite
00:31:17.200 a while you know and a lot of pushing um a lot of pushing back by a lot of very brave people
00:31:22.420 um so world aquatics were the first of the olympic sports really the big olympic sports which i was
00:31:29.320 very proud of um actually world rugby were the first to say we're going to protect the female
00:31:34.080 athletes because safety was an option okay so we're talking to go back to that boxing thing
00:31:38.040 you know hitting 160 percent harder imagine running at each other on a rugby pitch you know
00:31:41.880 the damage to people's necks the spinal cords and things like that i mean seriously in contact sports
00:31:46.540 it was a massive accident waiting to happen and there are still lots of contact sports are not
00:31:50.400 protecting their female athletes football being one men kicks 50% harder so you know it's this
00:31:57.340 they are going to be life-changing injuries if something's not done so and then track and field
00:32:01.980 Saab earlier this year protected track and field as well British triathlon have been in very very
00:32:06.740 strong British volleyball been very strong we're hoping well cycling will be the next to do it but
00:32:11.980 they have got at the moment 50 50 just in north america alone trans identifying males in women's
00:32:18.320 sport that are winning prizes all over the place british cycling have ever ever no said we're
00:32:23.320 going to protect the female category but things like parkrun parkrun are allowing people to 1.00
00:32:27.580 identify however they want and course records women's course records are falling every single 0.81
00:32:31.200 weekend across the uk so why why wouldn't parkrun just introduce extra boxes for people to tick i
00:32:38.000 don't get it you know it's an it's it's an easy thing to do people go online to log in and you
00:32:44.080 know to join up and i want more people doing that i think it's a fabulous event but why should women 1.00
00:32:49.640 be losing their records to people that are male why can't we just have a box that says transgender
00:32:53.880 woman and transgender men and you have a transgender woman's record and a transgender men's record and
00:32:57.980 a woman's record and a man's record and an under 10s record and you know a master's record or
00:33:02.380 whatever but they're not doing that they're just allowing people to self-id and of course again
00:33:07.320 it's women that will lose out constantly. Do you think, and this is not a particularly nice 0.96
00:33:11.640 question, but do you think it might need something drastic, like a woman gets seriously injured and
00:33:17.880 then we have lawsuits involved for the actual real change to be made and people go, enough?
00:33:24.840 And that's what I'm trying to avoid, to be honest with you. That's what, speaking out,
00:33:28.280 I've been trying to, I've been trying to stop there having to be a Leah Thomas in every sport
00:33:32.220 before every sport does the obvious.
00:33:34.980 Males are stronger and faster 0.81
00:33:37.000 and more explosive than females. 1.00
00:33:39.220 Not because we're better,
00:33:40.860 because we're different.
00:33:42.080 You know, we're built to do different things.
00:33:43.580 I'm built as a species
00:33:45.520 with a large gamete
00:33:47.060 to carry a child and to feed a child.
00:33:49.240 That's why I'm made for.
00:33:50.660 Okay, you have small gametes,
00:33:52.940 your job is different.
00:33:54.300 And so it's not because we're better or worse.
00:33:57.000 You know, it's so insulting
00:33:58.440 when trans activists say 0.60
00:33:59.400 women should just train harder. 1.00
00:34:02.220 because I mean I was training six hours a day for 10 years of my life I broke my arms broke both
00:34:08.080 bones in both arms my dad's wrapped them in plastic bags and I trained with two broken arms
00:34:12.180 the following year I tore the ligaments in my knee my dad tied my legs together for three months and
00:34:16.480 I trained with my arms only you know I could not have done more than I did it was impossible and
00:34:22.920 most of the time I was training with the guys and I was beating quite a few of the guys but I didn't
00:34:26.940 beat the elite guys you know i was miles away i was 11 away from the elite guys no matter how hard
00:34:33.760 i trained and when you see these people transition for instance like alia thomas do you think i mean
00:34:41.300 it's very difficult to see because there's a certain cynicism that creeps in are you cynical
00:34:47.260 or do you just try and remove yourself from that line of thinking and just stick to the facts
00:34:51.640 i try really hard to stick to the facts you know what i might tell you in private might be very
00:34:56.180 different from what i tell you on film but i try very very hard to be very logical very fact-based
00:35:02.680 very honest um just very straightforward with it all really you know very scientific because i think
00:35:10.200 that's the only way that that we can win ultimately um i don't want there to be a little thomas and
00:35:15.300 every straw and i don't want a woman to lose her life or be you know in a wheelchair to prove that 0.98
00:35:20.460 a male is stronger should never be in a contact sport i mean boxing is an interesting one because 1.00
00:35:24.820 Boxing have said we will not, the male boxers said
00:35:29.540 we will not fight a female. 0.99
00:35:32.320 So if somebody wants to be a transgender man 1.00
00:35:34.760 and wants to go in a fight with the men, 0.99
00:35:37.300 the men said we will not do it because we will kill somebody.
00:35:41.380 So they've created extra leagues.
00:35:44.380 So they recognised that there was potential
00:35:46.780 for that manslaughter charge to come into it eventually.
00:35:52.580 Sharon, do you think this is a blip? Do you think it's just fairly stagnant institutions that didn't see it coming, it blindsided them, it came out of left field and now one of them is going to catch up and then another one and quite quickly this moment will be over?
00:36:13.940 Or do you think this is going to be a battle that you're going to have to keep fighting for some time?
00:36:19.500 I'd like to think if the three big Olympic sports, you know, protect their female classifications, 0.99
00:36:24.240 then all of the other sports will find it a little bit easier to follow.
00:36:27.600 But there are a lot of very misogynistic sports at the moment that are run by what I would call the old school,
00:36:32.240 which are dragging their feet. And in North America, it's particularly difficult.
00:36:35.500 I mean, we've even got Biden at the moment talking about, you know, removing the protection of Title IX.
00:36:40.400 Now, Title IX came in in 1972 to protect female sport and to give females the same opportunities to get to university scholarships, 1.00
00:36:48.260 you know and all those sort of things to have basketball teams and women's football teams and 1.00
00:36:52.720 all the rest of it and they had a massive it had a 300 improvement rate literally within the space
00:36:57.500 of a couple of years in female participation in sport so if we remove that and and allow people 1.00
00:37:02.900 to self-identify into women it's going to go backwards and what we find is that women remove 1.00
00:37:07.300 themselves so if you if you have um i don't know let's just be hypothetical if you have a parent
00:37:13.740 that turns up with their daughter to play a rugby game and they recognize that there's a male
00:37:18.160 on the opposite team, the parent will remove their child.
00:37:22.380 Understandably.
00:37:22.920 Yeah, exactly.
00:37:23.940 I'm a sensible dad.
00:37:25.180 I do not want my daughter having her neck broken.
00:37:27.480 I'm taking her off the field. 0.99
00:37:29.420 And so we end up self-excluding.
00:37:32.860 So less and less women are taking part in things and doing things. 0.99
00:37:35.860 They're self-excluding because it's unfair.
00:37:38.520 And one of the things I find the most heartbreaking
00:37:40.360 is that we've had a massive increase in primary schools
00:37:43.380 now just having sports days, which are mixed sex.
00:37:46.080 and I've lost count of the number of parents
00:37:48.700 that have contacted me with their 11-year-old daughter
00:37:51.380 who's come back from sports day
00:37:52.740 and said not a single little girl won a race today
00:37:54.680 because all the races were mixed.
00:37:58.060 And what message are we giving little girls? 1.00
00:38:01.520 A, they're not entitled to fairness
00:38:02.800 and B, they can't win.
00:38:05.160 I mean, it's just crazy.
00:38:07.540 And also, there's no point in even trying.
00:38:11.620 Well, exactly, that's the point.
00:38:13.000 So they give up, so they don't even bother to try.
00:38:15.140 you know the messages are outrageous and how hard is it to have two races but they're petrified
00:38:22.200 of being accused by you know somebody of not being pc and so they're just taking the lazy option
00:38:28.640 and i don't understand why these teachers these sports clubs these ngbs are not supporting their
00:38:35.640 female athletes well you make the point beautifully i think i really look forward i haven't had a
00:38:40.480 chance to read the book but i'm going to i really look forward to that tell everybody what it what
00:38:44.940 it's called it's called unfair play it's about the battle for women's sport throughout history
00:38:49.960 obviously covering the east german era a lot of horrendous truths which i which really opened my
00:38:55.240 eyes and obviously that where we are right now with the battle with the transgender inclusion
00:38:59.060 perfect uh but we i don't want to wrap up yet because i think what you were talking about with
00:39:04.080 resilience is actually something really really important we're working on a couple of projects
00:39:08.620 around showcasing that but uh you're a professional athlete you talk about i mean
00:39:14.680 wrapping broken arms in plastic bags you know knee injuries just you know that that sounds
00:39:21.420 crazy to a normal person i have to tell you yeah talk to us about mindset talk to us about that
00:39:29.500 like how do you have that level of determination that you're willing to endure that sort of thing
00:39:35.120 in order to get to where you want to get to?
00:39:37.280 I think it's the same as looking at an entrepreneur,
00:39:39.440 you know, that maybe has lost their million,
00:39:40.820 made their million, lost it again and gone again.
00:39:43.080 You know, it's that utter determination
00:39:45.280 to want to be the best you can be
00:39:47.120 and the sacrifices that are evolved to do that.
00:39:50.800 The support structure, you need that.
00:39:52.420 My dad was my coach.
00:39:53.520 You know, my parents gave up all their summer holidays,
00:39:55.840 all their spare cash for me to be able to do my sport.
00:39:59.700 Didn't get to travel around the world watching me
00:40:01.440 because they couldn't afford it.
00:40:02.340 Came from a very normal background.
00:40:03.980 Dad was in the Navy, got invalidated at
00:40:05.480 because he lost the sight in his eye.
00:40:07.640 And my dad spoke out.
00:40:09.000 And because my dad spoke out about the East Germans,
00:40:10.680 he was never picked as an international coach,
00:40:12.900 even though he had the only female individual medalist
00:40:15.820 from the whole of the 1980 Olympics, which was me.
00:40:18.500 And he wasn't picked because he spoke out.
00:40:20.760 So even though we think that we understand the East German thing
00:40:25.280 and we go, of course they were cheating, why was it more done?
00:40:27.740 We knew at the time, and exactly the same happened to him
00:40:30.120 as kind of happened to me.
00:40:31.180 and is there a difference in mentality between the individual individualist sports like swimming
00:40:38.140 and people who play a team sport or is it kind of the same um good yeah i think it's slightly
00:40:45.040 different because my son plays rugby i've got a 16 year old's part of both academy and my eldest
00:40:49.260 played rugby at millfield and my daughter did track and field so they've all done sport that's
00:40:53.240 within the genes yeah um millfield's a very good sports school for people who yeah we used to play
00:40:59.680 against them and get slaughtered every time yeah he was on a little bit of a scholarship but it was
00:41:05.000 still a very expensive school um yeah i mean i think the mentality of a team sport is that there's
00:41:10.640 15 of you in rugby or 11 or whatever and so you know you're part of a like a cog in a machine and
00:41:16.780 all of it has got to work together and everyone's got their job whereas in an individual sport it's
00:41:21.060 just you and i must admit i always felt that i was an individual i didn't like being in a team i
00:41:26.040 didn't like feeling like i had to rely on somebody else being on their a game it was down to me and
00:41:30.520 if i wasn't on my a game it's my fault so so yeah i think there is a you know a certain mentality
00:41:35.740 to people that want to do it individually versus people that want to do it in the team but there's
00:41:39.240 still huge sacrifices and hard work involved the physical you know the fact that you weren't happy
00:41:44.600 to beat your body up to the nth degree i mean you know swimmers our injuries are shoulders because
00:41:49.820 we're rotating all the time but you know you look at foot i was talking to lee dixon earlier this
00:41:54.440 week because he's got a knee issue and i've had some knee issues and he was talking to me about
00:41:58.720 all the ops he's had you know from football acls all the time whatever uh steve backley had a hip
00:42:03.880 replacement at 39 because he was constantly twisting you know to throw a javelin so we
00:42:08.420 wreck our bodies bodies aren't designed to do six hours a day you know repetition no they're
00:42:14.060 absolutely not another thing that i wanted to ask is that a lot of athletes talk about this mindset
00:42:21.880 that when they cross the metaphorical white line
00:42:24.640 when they go and play football,
00:42:26.100 it's a rugby or swimming as well,
00:42:29.340 that they kind of change as people.
00:42:32.220 Did you have to, you know, you become more ruthless,
00:42:35.000 you become more direct,
00:42:35.920 you leave, you know, the Sharon Davis,
00:42:38.140 who's the daughter, the friend, the mother,
00:42:40.100 that's back in the changing room.
00:42:42.200 When you're out there, you want to destroy.
00:42:46.760 So is a champion made or born?
00:42:49.920 Question, yeah.
00:42:50.620 yeah so a bit of both because because ultimately there's got to be something in you that makes you
00:42:55.400 want to win regardless and that i think is genetic that is just who you are and then the other bit is
00:43:00.860 is all the ingredients in the cake there you know do you happen to be the right size to do the sport
00:43:05.660 that you want to do um do you have the right support structure do you have the coaching do
00:43:09.440 you have the access to the pool does your body not break down and enable you to do the training
00:43:13.460 that's required you know those are all the things that have to go into making this cake that's got
00:43:17.140 to be presented on the day and absolutely beautifully and so you go off and you win
00:43:20.440 the olympics or whatever so it's definitely a bit of both i mean if you said to me you know if i was
00:43:25.780 playing a game of cards did i care whether i win or lose i'll tell you i want to win you know that's
00:43:31.380 the way that i'm made just the same um michael jordan is famously like that like he cannot lose
00:43:37.120 anything yeah you know it's in your dna isn't it that you that's what's important to you you know
00:43:41.800 you want to win i think having a family as a woman definitely makes you a little bit softer 1.00
00:43:47.040 you know it you change your priorities a little bit and and or a big bit i mean i've my wife has
00:43:53.660 had a baby they just it was a big change it wasn't a little bit it's a change for my man dad isn't it
00:43:57.780 but i think mums in particular all of a sudden they just go down that pecking order until they 0.52
00:44:01.580 realize that they're at the bottom of the pecking order everybody including the dogs
00:44:04.300 talk to us about losing uh it sounds like a loaded question but it's not everybody loses in life
00:44:12.740 everybody experiences setback and sport in many ways is we talked about a little bit earlier is
00:44:19.300 the perfect place to know and learn how to lose well how to bounce back what what is your advice
00:44:27.780 what are your thoughts on people experiencing difficulties and setbacks in life how do you
00:44:32.260 bounce back from a setback i think it's that understanding of you get something positive
00:44:37.340 out of everything you do you know whether it's an experience or just learning it's not what you want
00:44:41.620 to do you know you think about lots of youngsters nowadays you know trying to pick their options or
00:44:46.180 pick what they want to go to university or pick what their first job is going to be you know
00:44:49.460 and I've always said to my lot just you go and do it go and do it if it doesn't work you can
00:44:54.400 change your mind you can change your mind go start again do something totally different but be brave
00:44:58.580 enough to go and do it so I think sport for me taught me to be brave it taught me to just try
00:45:03.260 things and if it doesn't work well I learned that I didn't want to do it that's a good lesson
00:45:07.880 and instead of being afraid to not try and what was it like to represent your country I imagine
00:45:15.140 that must have been such a thrill I was doing it at such a young age it sounds silly but I kind of
00:45:19.240 just grew up with it all you know I was a question I often get asked or it must have been incredibly
00:45:24.780 daunting being at the Olympics at 13 actually it's the opposite because when you're yeah so
00:45:29.300 when you're there as a youngster you're like wow this is cool and you're not oh my god the world's
00:45:34.440 watch me it doesn't occur to you what is in your back of your mind is well I'll be here in four
00:45:38.440 years time and I'll be really good whereas so I went up to my first limits I'm like this is
00:45:42.160 fabulous I'm getting to find out where the changing rooms are how this works what an Olympic village
00:45:46.180 is like what the food hall's like I never thought oh my god I'm like a rabbit in the headlights I
00:45:50.360 was just soaking it all up thinking I've got my future in front of me which is really positive
00:45:55.220 it gets really scary when you've spent 10 years training and you've got one race coming and you 1.00
00:46:00.260 know there's not another one you know that there's that one race on that one day and if you mess that
00:46:05.860 up there will never be another chance ever that's quite scary and that's the difference between an
00:46:12.540 elite athlete and someone who's got you know loads of talent is that ability to handle pressure
00:46:19.000 yeah i think so i think the mental strength to be able to put it into context you know and to
00:46:24.360 understand there is an olympics it is really special however it's not life and death you know
00:46:29.700 If something was to go drastically wrong, you will survive.
00:46:32.520 You will still be there the next day.
00:46:34.860 Sharon Davis, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking with you.
00:46:37.600 We're going to go to locals for our supporters' questions
00:46:40.120 that they've already submitted for you.
00:46:41.620 But before we do, we always end with the same question with all our guests,
00:46:45.560 which is what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society
00:46:48.620 that you think we really should be?
00:46:51.280 I think the misogyny thing is a real big problem at the moment.
00:46:55.000 I would love to see more men recognising it
00:46:56.800 and more men standing up for women, particularly in sport.
00:47:00.140 A lot of the time they've sat on the fence and stayed very quiet.
00:47:02.600 So I'd like to see that happen a bit more.
00:47:05.140 Sharon, it's been a pleasure.
00:47:06.840 If people want to buy your book, if people want to find you online,
00:47:09.180 where's the best place to do that?
00:47:10.000 We're everywhere.
00:47:10.500 We're actually in high street shops as well, which is really lovely.
00:47:13.420 We're on Amazon.
00:47:14.600 Yeah, so you can find us pretty much anywhere.
00:47:16.600 Fantastic.
00:47:17.100 Well, thank you for being here for the interview.
00:47:18.520 Follow us over to Locals, where we're going to ask Sharon your questions.
00:47:21.480 Does Sharon think we should go back and strip the records
00:47:25.920 slash medals from past steroid users slash abusers
00:47:29.600 or should we just draw a line and move forward from here?