The women are athletes!

Let's start with a tribute to a woman who helped make high caliber competitive long distance running possible: Dr. Joan Ullyot. The pioneering running doctor died in June at age 80.

She helped bring women into the 1970s running boom. Like so many women, she didn't want to get fat as she came into mid-adulthood, so she took up jogging when she had a young family -- and proved to have a minor talent. In 1976, she published Women's Running to refute myths such as that the activity would cause our uteruses to collapse and make us infertile. The book is long out of print; I just looked it up on Amazon and found it used for about $35. Apparently I have a classic on my shelf. It's fair to say I took up running through her influence and enjoyed watching her charge off into the distance in local races in the late '70s.

Ullyot helped make equality for women in long distance running a political cause, lending her professional prestige to ending discrimination. 

As a member of the International Runners’ Committee, an advocacy group formed in 1979 to lobby for the inclusion of women’s long-distance races in international competition, Dr. Ullyot used her research in presentations that the group made to the I.O.C. in the run-up to the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Then as now, the Olympic Committee was a bunch of corrupt old fossils, but an international pressure campaign won the first women's marathon in 1984. It took several more Olympics before these men were forced to add other distances beyond the sprints. 

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My favorite sports reporter, Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post, teed off today on a report that finds the NCAA treats the annual college women's tournament shoddily -- and then lies about it. Out of ignorant sexism, leaders of the athletic association claim that women's basketball is a money loser, squashing opportunities for growth and even profit.

The report states that the women’s basketball tournament ranks among ESPN’s highest-rated programs — with viewership comparable to the NBA Finals, college football conference title games, MLB postseason and Grand Slam tennis finals. Championship ratings for the women have risen by 32 percent since 2015, at a time when almost every other major sport has declined. Women’s sports are soaring opportunities in a stale market. An independent media consultant labels the women’s tournament “one of the most valuable U.S. sports media properties” with the potential for utterly explosive growth on multiple platforms.

But, no -- the NCAA doesn't want to give women a chance for equal billing. Jenkins quotes another of my favorite leaders in women's sports. 

“It just feels like more than neglect,” Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer said after reading the report. “It feels willful. It feels purposeful.”

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I suppose I should say something about the Tokyo Olympics, but I just can't. They seem cursed. The irresponsibility of holding an international superspreader event in the middle of a pandemic, against the wishes of the people of the host city, in order to satisfy the advertisers unhinges my mind -- and spoils my delighted appreciation of the work and accomplishments of the athletes. Let this be over with as little further human damage as possible!