Female athlete power on social media became ever more strident in 2024 – but the backlash also damaged careers and wellbeing
ina Nielsen remembers the moment she had the idea. She was sitting around the Olympic Village in Paris with her sprinting teammates – and she was bored. “I said to Yemi Mary John: ‘I’m gonna make this TikTok’,” Nielsen recalls. She took herself to her bedroom, got out the flip phone each athlete had been given and typed into an Excel spreadsheet: “Where you at? Holla at me.”
The US gymnasts’ feeds became a narrative arc in their own right after MyKayla Skinner criticised her former teammates’ work ethic just before they took gold and, the US rugby star whose candour captured hearts with her trademark lipstick and faux Love Island videos from the Olympic village. The 28-year-old – who won a bronze with the US side in Paris and a runner-up medal in Dancing with the Stars – caused a sensation when she signed with Bristol Bears this month.
Relatability has become a USP in a sports industry where exorbitantly paid male athletes from Premier League footballers to NBA stars can appear to lose touch with reality, being swept up into academies and college programmes from their teens.Jenny Mitton, the managing partner and women’s sport lead at the M&C Saatchi agency, says it makes sense that sportswomen should be natural communicators on socials – they have long had to raise their voices to be heard.
But there is a dark side. Research commissioned by the International Olympic Committee and published by Loughborough University
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