Noah Aniser
New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/16/sports/lauren-fleshmans-feminist-approach-to-coaching.html?action=click&module=Features&pgtype=Homepage
Lauren Fleshman’s Feminist Approach to Coaching
The article is about the former elite runner Lauren Fleshman and her approach on changing the way elite women view running. She wants to achieve that female runners see beyond their speed and looks because these attributes can cause serious dangers. The “win-at-all-cost” culture has harmed so many athletes including her which is why she wants to prevent others from suffering the same fate.
After the author gives the main information, she mentions the really successful career of Lauren Fleshman and how that impacted her women-centered coaching approach. Even though the career sounds really impressive, Fleshman thinks that she never reached her full potential as an athlete and that, simply because she focused too much on her body size.
By comparing herself to the top athletes, she figured how much weight she has to lose. Through hard workouts and a good diet, she achieved her goal of losing weight and becoming faster. Now she realizes that it was the wrong approach. Health problems and other issues like stress followed and made her miss several opportunities like the Olympic games in 2008 and 2012.
Female athletes need a different approach of coaching says Fleshman. They need an environment that honors their physiology and counters the reality of sexism.
Afterwards the author keeps talking more in depth about the measurements for the group of athletes and what their results mean. She ends the article by giving even more background information on female athletes and examples where they got treated wrong.
The article is definitely worth reading because it talks about a topic that I actually never thought about. I’m an athlete and therefore I know how dangerous pressure is and how drastically it can affect your health.
The structure of the article is good because the main information comes right after the little introduction in the beginning and the background information is placed towards the end. I think that the article is newsworthy because the majority of the population did some kind of competitive sport in their life and therefore know how dangers the “win-at-all-cost” culture actually is. Competing with pain is just one example.
The headline is in my eyes not the best because the use of the term “Feminist” might cause some people especially men, not to read the article.Overall, it’s an interesting article about a topic that deserves more attention.