By Amalia Theocharidou,
The Olympics of 2024 in Paris have gained a huge part of their popularity, as well as backlash, due to the declaration that these Games will bring up the matter of supporting minorities and not so privileged communities, like no other. We were happy to see the creation of an LGBTQ+ space, where the athletes of the said community felt safe enough to express their true selves, despite belonging to a profession that has been proved oppressing at times. Despite, though, the said actions, which are supposed to help the institution grow politically correct, the audience was still saddened to encounter “traditional” (because, sadly, our reality has stated it to be nothing but ordinary), pure sexism. But luckily, the higher-ups are here to take action against it.
To begin with, commentator Bob Ballard was removed from the journalist team of Eurosport, despite his years of experience, after he made a sexist comment towards a team of female athletes. When the Australian team of women won the gold medal in the women’s 4×100-metre freestyle final, they celebrated for a while before heading to the awarding ceremony, which caused Ballard to say “Well, the women just finishing off. You know [what] women are like hanging around, you know, doing their makeup“, in order to justify their delay. The comment snapped the attention of his co-commentator, Lizzie Simmonds, who immediately added, “outrageous Bob, some of the men are doing that as well“. The so-stereotypical comment woke great internet backlash, with most of the users demanding his suspension from the Games. Shortly after this, Eurosport outed a statement, claiming that Ballard has been withdrawn from commentating on another match of the Olympics. Ballard, later on, posted a text, stating he meant no harm and is, instead, a great supporter of women in sports.
In further terms of gender equality, the head of Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) has urged the filming crew to broadcast all of the athletes in the same way. It was surprising to notice that the majority of the crew were men, as well as the differences in capturing the matches of the two genders. Chief executive, Yiannis Exarchos, noted that women tend to be filmed more sexually, encroaching on the terms of respect and equality. With that being said, he stated that by no means are the Games trying to showcase women as objects of sexual desires, but as elite athletes, who’ve earned their right to participate. Exarchos claims that the source of the problem has been the strong patriarchal views, due to which women tend to have more close-ups than men while performing.
This year’s Games have an enhanced team in charge of gender equality at the International Olympic Committee. Its director, Marie Sallois, has taken action to ensure that inequality will be out of the picture. Specifically, women’s games, which traditionally have been taking place in the afternoons, giving the spotlight and the bigger audience to men, have been transferred to mornings, instead of afternoons that they usually were, and the women’s race has been set as the ending event of the Olympics, in contrast to the usual tradition of the ending men’s race. Let’s hope that this year’s Olympics will be the way of correcting a huge misspelling that has been going on for far too long.
References
- Paris 2024: ‘Sexist’ behavior by camera operators and commentator not tolerated. Le Mond. Available here
- Eurosport removes commentator Bob Ballard from Olympics coverage over comment on Australian athletes. ABC News. Available here
- Commentator Bob Ballard responds after removal from Olympics over ‘inappropriate comment’ on Australian swimmers. ABC News. Available here
