I just turned on NBC to see which Premiere League game was on TV. No soccer. (Boooo)
Instead it was the IAAF Diamond League Track and Field Championships. Before I could turn it, a pretty American girl caught my eye. I thought to myself "she's too pretty to win. I bet she comes in dead last." So testing to see if my pre-conceived, stereotypical notions were right or wrong, I paused laundry duty to watch the race.
I have to confess, Women's Track and Field is way, way off my radar and the last Women's Track athlete I could name was Jackie Joyner-Kersee. As the racers lined up, I wondered to myself if I was watching an exhibition. There were 7 ladies racing against 1 "man."
Within 10 steps the announcers were already singing the praises of Caster Semenya, who was destroying the competition right out of the gate....
Not sure what was going on, I took to the internet to get an education.
Part of me feels bad for having pre-conceived prejudices, but the eye test was correct. Semenya won by a mile and the American wasn't even in the screen shot. (So I had to "borrow" a shot from a couple of years back.)
But part of me saw the dejection of the 7 other women women in the race. As a free speech site, I wondered how the other women really felt.
No woman approached Semenya after the race. If you watched the replay, Semenya approached the other racers. Each gave a polite smile for the camera, then the smile dropped as the camera turned away.
I continued to watch Track and Field and a youngster named Salwa Eid Naser set the track on fire. Smaller than the other racers, she's going to be the female face of track and field at the next Olympics.
Far Left: Salwa Eid Naser from Bahrain.
She, too, flew by the Americans. But when that race was over, I noticed how beautiful Naser was, she looked like a woman racer who-------
Editor's Note: We are shutting down the article now.