We go again

A quick update

Hello 2025! First, a little explanation. I realise this is my first post in a while, after a hiatus that went a bit longer than planned because of a project taking up slightly more of my time over the last couple of months. I’ll share more on that soon, but the good news is I’ll be back to weekly posts from next week (you can usually expect it in your inbox on Wednesdays).

I’ve been quiet this past month, but spent it writing, watching a lot of sport (any other exclusively December/January darts fans here?!) and doing a bit of reflecting on the year. 2024 was the year we saw individual women athletes capture the headlines and draw in fans yet again.

The gongs handed out over the last few weeks were a measure of that. Record-breaking gymnast Simone Biles was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year. Basketball player and WNBA rookie Caitlin Clark was given Time Magazine’s prestigious cover for Athlete of the Year. In the UK, Olympic champion 800m runner Keely Hodgkinson won the BBC’s public vote to take the Sports Personality of the Year crown. She was the fourth woman in a row to be given that honour (following Emma Raducanu, Beth Mead and Mary Earps) — the first time that has ever happened. It marks a major shift, after a 14-year stretch of exclusively male winners of the award.

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Awards in sport will always be subjective, the processes behind them are oftentimes questionable and they really don’t matter as much as the sport itself. But this streak of women winning SPOTY is still significant, because it is so far away from where we were in 2020, when I felt compelled to write a column headlined “Why I (reluctantly) think there needs to be a separate women's SPOTY.” The odds felt so skewed in men’s favour at that time, that (to me) it felt completely pointless to have a joint award at all.

I won’t bore you with cliches about women’s sport being here to stay, but I will say that — as a woman working in the industry and who reports on women in sport — it’s nice to feel a lot more optimistic heading into 2025.

I’ll be offering all my thoughts on what’s to come over the next few months, but here are a few pieces I read/wrote over the last few weeks:

The aforementioned Caitlin Clark profile by Time Magazine, written by Sean Gregory.

Charlie Eccleshare and Matt Futterman’s report on the WTA’s provisional coaching suspension and ongoing investigation into Stefano Vukov — just days after Elena Rybakina rehired him. The final ruling will be big news heading into the Australian Open later this month.

My last piece of 2024, an interview with Katie Boulter for the Guardian, where she shared her experience of being harassed on the tennis tour.

Donald McRae’s interview with former tennis pro Conor Niland, who won the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award last month, for his book The Racket.

Thanks for reading, back next week!