If professional sporting success was a 100m racetrack, the starting blocks being discovery of the sport and the finish line being a major sports contract, the track ahead would appear totally different for a young girl compared to the track for a young boy. The boys' track would be flat and open; they would just have to focus on beating the others crouched on their left and right. The stadium would be packed with spectators and the trophy would be huge.
The girls' track, by contrast, would be sloped, littered with hurdles and obstructed by stop signs where it intersected with the boys' track. The stadium would be three-quarters empty during their event and the trophy at the finish line may not even be worth the cost of racing to it.
If a young woman is dissuaded from an active life, daunted by the tortuous task of running that race, she will likely experience serious health consequences.
Libby Cook-Black is working to level the track, remove some of the obstacles, help young women leap the rest and disentangle the girls' track from the boys'. Libby is a former professional athlete who represented Australia and Queensland in Rugby, and she has experienced most of the difficulties that journey imposes upon an aspiring female athlete. She hopes her fight, and the fight of her sporting sisters, has cleared some of the path for the coming generations.
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