Sport

Megan Rapinoe, prominent US women’s football player, widely regarded as the best woman footballer ever, has announced her retirement at 38. With her striking flash of short purple (or green) hair she had a dynamic presence on the field. She was a member of the US team which won the 2012 Olympics in London, and she played in the winning US team at the FIFA Women’s World Cup in 2015 and 2019. She is one of the very few women (or men) to have ever scored twice direct from corner kicks. Off the field, Rapinoe was often in the limelight as a strong and vocal advocate of lesbian and trans rights and...

Spanish football is in turmoil after weeks of uncertainty over the future of football federation (RFEF) President Luis Rubiales. At a ceremony after Spain’s World Cup win, the now-suspended football chief kissed midfielder Jenni Hermoso. Rubiales claims the kiss was consensual. Hermoso denies that, stating she was she said she was “the victim of an aggression”. The Spanish government, Fifa, and many high profile players have condemned Rubiales, but he refuses to resign. This is not the first scandal to hit women’s football in Spain. Less than a year before their World Cup win, Spain faced a...

Famously Lord’s cricket ground, the self-declared “home of cricket”, has a marked slope. The 27 June report from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket confirms that English cricket is more generally not played on a level playing field. The report looks at the deep institutional racism and sexism in cricket, and links it to broader class inequality. English cricket long had a strict and explicit class divide, up to 1963 being played by Gentlemen (amateurs) and Players (professionals), using different changing rooms and entrances onto the field...

Vinesh Phogat, an Indian Olympian who has accused Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh of sexually abusing her, says protests will stop now Singh has been charged. Indian wrestlers, including Olympic medallists Sakshi Malik and Bajrang Punia, have been protesting for months seeking the arrest of Singh — a member of parliament from the ruling far right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Olympic medallists and other Indian wrestling champions participated in a weeks-long sit-in in the capital New Delhi, accusing Singh of groping women athletes and demanding sexual...

I think Maxine Carpenter ( Solidarity 677 ) is right to recognise Joanna Harper as an “authoritative voice” on trans rights and sports. Harper argues carefully against British Cycling banning trans cyclists from high-fame-big-money women’s events even if they have completed medical transition and done medical tests. Harper’s research, much already published , more in the works, finds that trans women athletes are bigger and stronger than cis women, but they also suffer physiological disadvantages. If there is a net advantage, it is small. History corroborates. Alarm about women’s sport being...

Bravo to Solidarity for the interview with Joanna Harper, who is an authoritative voice on trans rights and sport ( 676 ). Let’s hope the paper carries more interviews and articles of this quality on these important matters. Harper is right about the current climate of hostility towards trans women and men, which socialists are duty-bound to oppose vigorously. However this context cannot rule out tackling difficult concrete questions. Sport is not simply a wedge issue to attack trans rights — it is also a mass participation activity where equality, fairness and inclusion matter to billions of...

The following represents the opinion of Joanna Harper and is not in any way a representation of the opinion of Loughborough University. Joanna Harper is a researcher on trans sport performance (at Loughborough University), author of the book Sporting Gender , and a trans athlete herself. Trans women have probably been more successful in cycling, on a global level, than in any other sport. The list of successful trans women cyclists includes a Dutch 15-year professional cyclist who just retired in the last year, and an alternate for the 2020 US Olympic team. Whatever advantages these trans...

On 26 May, British Cycling banned trans women from competitive cycling. Joanna Harper, the leading academic researcher on trans women’s sports performance, and a trans athlete herself, commented on ITN: “This is just another in a long line of British sports governing bodies that have made very similar decisions, following triathlon, athletics, rugby, etc... There have been a number of trans cyclists in Britain and around the world who have been reasonably successful in the sport, but they have not been over-represented in the sport, nor are in any way threatening to take over the sport”. Trans...

The Ed Sullivan Show was a weekly television programme which was watched by millions. It helped define popular culture for decades to come by introducing groups like the Beatles to an American audience. In 1967, the Rolling Stones were due to be guests on the show. They wanted to play their hit song "Let's Spend the Night Together". This offended Sullivan's sense of decency, and he reportedly told Mick Jagger and his band that the lyrics were unacceptable. "Either the song goes, or you go," is what he said. The band changed the lyrics to "Let's Spend Some Time Together" and were allowed to...

A football film? Not an easy choice: as a critic once put it, you either have footballers who can’t act or actors who can’t play football. The end-product is fairly predictable. A good illustration is the ludicrous Escape to Victory (directed by John Huston, 1981) where a scratch team of World War 2 POWs (which for some inexplicable reason includes Pelé) take on a crack German team and force a draw while managing to escape their captors in the post-match chaos. It’s good for a laugh — and not much else — but was partly inspired by a much better Hungarian film Two Half Times in Hell (1961)...