Sharron Davies Lifts SOS Courage Cup On Front Line Of Fight To Save Women’s Sport
To mark the 50th anniversary of East Germany's doping State Research Plan 14:25, we recall how Sharron Davies' lead role in the fight to save women's sport links the events of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s to today's battle to ring fence women's sport for females only
To mark the 50th anniversary of East Germany's State Research Plan 14:25 and official birth of the doping heist of the 20th Century, an SOS overview of that horrid history is accompanied by a series of related articles from our archive. Below is from January 4 this year and celebrates Sharron Davies' leading contribution to the fight to save women's sport and how the events of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s relates to the current battle to ring fence women's sport for females only.
The SOS overview:
January 4, 2024:
The SOS Courage Cup for 2023 goes to Sharron Davies, the first swimmer unaided by male steroids to stop the clock in the 1980 Olympic 400m medley final and athlete-voice campaigner for truth, justice and reconciliation for female athletes in the face of half a century and more of Unfair Play.
The latter is capped because it is the title of the book Unfair Play in which Sharron charts the appalling experience of women in Olympic (and other) sports since the modern Games got underway in 1896. The latest overt discrimination against women was triggered by the late 2015 decision (it would be at least a year later, beyond the Rio 2016 Olympics, before the consequences became clear) of the International Olympic Committee to remove the only remaining barrier to biological males having access to female sport.
