Forget about men
By
Inas Mazhar
Could it be that our sporting future lies with women? Has lady luck finally smiled down on our ladies who may finally be starting to enjoy the fruits of their years of hard work?
After several years of being almost absent from the scene of any outstanding international achievements, Egyptian sports suddenly finds itself with three world champions. All reached stardom in the span of almost a year -- and all are females.
What's just as exciting -- from my expected perspective at least -- is that the three are still young, meaning that they are at the beginning of their careers and still have plenty to give and titles to collect.
Heba Salah became the first Egyptian woman to win a world championship, this one in karate.
Omnia Fakhri is another world champion, in the modern pentathlon, which to the uninitiated consists of five, some of them gruelling, events: swimming, cross-country running, shooting, equestrianship and fencing.
And Nahla Ramadan proved that a woman, even one in the Arab world, can excel at a sport known more for being a man's game: weightlifting. Ramadan won three gold medals and broke two world records in an under-21 championship in Budapest last week.
As great as the achievements are of these women athletes, none of their successes have been talking points in the media or on the street. Football so dominates sports news here that a lowly, meaningless match will forever attract more attention than a performance by a girl in any other sport, even if it happens to produce a world record.
That these women are so ignored, and none look like they will ever be household names, will certainly prove detrimental Creating a champion takes money and attention and so far they do not have enough of either. It would be a sure bet that if they were offered even 10 per cent of what their male partners receive in the way of media glare and financial rewards, the girls would do even better.
Our women athletes will need all the encouragement they can get because they might have to do with no more than 10 per cent, no matter what they achieve.
