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Better, Faster, Farther: Maggie Mertens and the Evolution of Women's Sports · Look Forward

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Transcript Provided by Kensho Nathan Hunt This is the Essential Podcast from S&P Global.
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My name is Nathan Hunt. Recently, S&P Global published a pair of articles focused on the
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rise of women's sports in the U.S. and Europe, and the news is undeniably good. This year,
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the Olympics will feature full-gender parity for the first time ever. Women's professional
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sports leagues are attracting audiences and sponsorship dollars comparable to men's leagues.
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Media outlets are paying top dollar for the right to broadcast women's collegiate and professional
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sports. It's possible to look at these results and believe that gender in sports is an issue of
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the past, a problem to be sure, but a problem that we overcame and moved beyond. This year,
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when we watch our countries compete in the Olympic Games, we will celebrate the accomplishments of
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men and women in equal numbers. But there is a problem with this simple tidy and somewhat
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self-congratulatory narrative. The problem of gender and sports did not end with the
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whalebone corset. The problem of gender in sports did not end when the Olympics allowed
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women to run the marathon, the problem of gender in sports continues to this day. My guest today
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is journalist Maggie Mertens, who is the author of a new book, "Better, Faster, Farther: How Running
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Changed Everything We Know About Women." This is a book that breaks down tidy narratives that
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talks about the history of women in running and how the gender disparities of the past continue
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to be felt in the present. Let me just say, I love this book. I tore through it in a weekend,
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pausing only to find my wife and tell her about the latest thing I had just read. And if that
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sounds like I mansplained gender disparities in sports to a woman who is a former college athlete,
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well, that might have happened. So Maggie, let me welcome you to the podcast. Maggie Mertens Thanks
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so much for having me. Nathan Hunt Maggie, let's start with just a basic question. Why running? Why
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was this the focus of this book? There's so many different stories you could have told, but you've
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shaped it through the lens of running. So why was running your focus? Maggie Mertens Running ended
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up making the most sense as the lens for this book after many years of research, sporting in general,
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and stories about women's physical capabilities being questioned in general. So I had -- as you
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know, because you've read it, a lot of historical examples of this happening of women being told
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they were physically incapable of doing things, and I wanted to see kind of how that narrative
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shaped the world. Running became the perfect vehicle for that because so many of the stories
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that really popped out as world shaping and sports shaping had to do with running. There was the 1928
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games, Olympic Games, where the women were first allowed to run track and field. And this huge
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incorrect narrative came out from that 800-meter race that occurred then. And that sort of ended
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up influencing later Olympic Games. Women weren't allowed to run farther than 100 meters for decades
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after that. And then there's the question of the marathon really stuck out to me as well. I think
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people are pretty shocked to find out that there was not an Olympic marathon for women until 1984.
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That's a pretty recent history, right, and it made me start to think about just the ways that
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our ideas as a society and about what women are physically capable of have changed so quickly.
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And so looking at running was a really great opportunity for that, also because running is such
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a universal movement, right? I think anybody has run in their life. If you've taken a gym glass,
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you've probably been forced to run. And I think that's just kind of a beautiful thing. And even
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looking at the history of human evolution, like humans are really good at running. We're good
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long-distance runners. And so to kind of count out half of the population from that natural
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movement felt pretty significant to me. Nathan Hunt So Maggie, a huge amount of the beliefs
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that historically, to an extent, continue to exist around women in running concern
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this idea that women are physically incapable of this in some way, that women, if they run,
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I think you make the reference, somehow their uteruses are going to fall out, right? What were
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the reasons why historically men believed women were incapable of running? Maggie Mertens Yes,
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that's a complicated question, for sure. I think the broad narrative was a fear of really losing
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the gender binary, right, of losing the gender roles that were very instilled in our society
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and many other Western societies and societies around the world, which really had to do with
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the nuclear family, making sure that there was a parent who was in charge of raising children
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and being at home. And our economy was kind of created on the back of that idea, right?
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And if you give women the idea that, oh, they can actually do more than that, that kind of starts to
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disrupt that particular lifestyle, right? That's societal order. So I think a lot of it kind of
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rooted from this idea of a lot of fear around a changing world. At the turn of the 20th century,
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we had women who wanted to vote. I mean when you just think about what a huge shift that must have
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felt like, to think that there was a certain class of person, a certain type of human being who was
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allowed to have power, who was allowed to go out and have this freedom of movement and deciding
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what -- where their family might live or what their life might look like and what society should
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look like, and women were included in that. And when they started to ask for that inclusion, that
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was really scary. So there was a lot of discussion around that time around kind of what makes a
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man and what makes a woman and ensuring that we really have these very different ideas about the 2
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sexes. And sports was really created to celebrate masculinity. And so when women wanted to do that,
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it sort of turned everything on its head and a lot of people, I think, were just really scared of
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that. Nathan Hunt Maggie, while I was reading the book, I kept thinking of something that happened
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a couple of years ago -- more than a couple of years ago, when my wife was pregnant with
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our first child. And we were at the time doing CrossFit, and for whatever reason, I think our
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gym was being renovated or something, we were in a public gym, like a 24-hour sports-type gym. And
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this particular workout involved interval sprints on the treadmill. And my wife was doing it,
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and she was visibly pregnant. She is probably, I don't know, about 6 months' pregnant. And she is
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doing these sprints, and my wife is an incredible athlete. So she's running faster than I am,
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6 months' pregnant, she's just going, right? And a man came out of nowhere and he was red in the
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face and he started yelling that she had to get off this treadmill. She was going to damage the
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baby. And my wife was like, no, I talked to my OB-GYN, this is just fine. She's -- I am doing
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this on doctor's advice, but I remember that red face, that fury, and I remember just seeming so
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out of left field to me. But again, as you've told this story about how sports has come to define
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masculinity, all of a sudden, his weird reaction to this made sense. But it also was the fact that
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he was defining my wife basically as a bearer of children and that was her value and this running
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was somehow self-indulgent. Maggie Mertens Yes. I mean that's been another very recent shift,
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right? I think I cited in the book that even OB-GYNs had been telling pregnant people to not
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exercise too excessively, even in very recent years. That was the most common advice. I had
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my first child in 2018, and I was told similar things, right? Don't lift weights that are too
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heavy. You don't do anything too excessive. And I think what's really shifted that is
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these professional women athletes that are just so incredible are finally getting the kinds of sports
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science and medical science behind them to have these long extensive athletic careers that include
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potentially becoming parents, having children and returning to sport. And that's given a lot
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of actual data to this idea that it's actually very healthy for a mother, for a pregnant person,
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to continue to exercise and to have a very strong body because, as I'm sure you know as a parent,
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childbirth is no joke and having small children is no joke in terms of physical needs. But it is,
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it's so rooted in this idea that early on, one of the first reasons given for women cannot run,
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women should be kind of restrained physically for running too far or too fast or even exercising to
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the point of like sweating was a big problem was the fear around reproductive health. And really,
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the fact that there was very little known around reproductive health and the men who kind
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of created the modern medical institutions were very kind of left that in this mysterious corner
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of we don't really want to know what happens. We just want to make sure that the babies continue to
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get born. And there was a lot of focus on periods being a time when women and girls should not do
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anything and puberty was like off limits, we should just not be exercising or moving our
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bodies at all, which is now we know is basically the opposite of what should be happening. But
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there was this huge fear that these women who were going to run, going to compete and going to try
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to become elite athletes were going to become essentially masculinized and potentially lose
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their ability to bear children. They weren't entirely sure how this was going to happen,
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right? There were rumors around whether their uteruses would fall out or whether they would
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stop having periods, whether the babies would just not come when they actually wanted them,
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et cetera. But yes, there's such a long history of that. And I think you continue to see it,
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too. I mean, even in the political world today, right, like reproductive health is something
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that's become such a sticking point. And so much of it has to do with this idea that women should
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not be in control of their own ideas, their own bodies and what they should do in terms of how
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to stay healthy and have kids when they want to. Nathan Hunt So Maggie, one of the themes that you
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talked about several times in the book is this idea of distance, right, that there have been many
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points along the way where we've said, well, okay, this far, women can run, let's say, 100 meters,
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right? We're pretty sure at 100 meters, their uteruses won't fall out. 100 meters is fine,
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right? And then it was, okay, well, they can run a little farther than that, but they can't run a
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mile, right? And if they run a mile, faster than anyone else has run a mile before any other woman,
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that's not a world record. They shouldn't be running a mile, again, uteruses. You just don't
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know, right? And then it was the marathon. Well, they can't run the marathon. And even if they do
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run the marathon, well, they didn't really run the marathon. And enter a book in this wonderful
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way with this woman who is sort of the champion ultramarathoner who beats the men, right? But why
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distance? Why did that become the area of focus? Maggie Mertens Yes, it's a great question. I mean,
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I think there was just any way to any way to kind of restrict and define an appropriate level of
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femininity and appropriate level of what women could -- how much women could exert themselves
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before it started to become troubling, right? So you do have early on examples. And this is
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essentially because women couldn't be stopped, right, like they were doing some of these things.
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They were doing sports. Even when men said they couldn't, they would do it anyway. They would
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set up their own leagues, things like that. So eventually, it was kind of like the men in
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charge of -- especially like the IOC and these big international sporting delegations, they had to
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cave in some ways, right? So they had to at least say, okay, well, we'll give you this and you can
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have this, but you can't have the full masculine slate of events. You can't run the marathon. So it
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was a way to kind of give women athletes a little bit without the fears that kind of came along
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with the rest of it, a way to continue to define difference, right? And so you had women golfers
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or tennis players or swimmers who were considered, okay, this is okay, maybe because you can wear a
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skirt when you do it or you can wear a swimsuit. And the short sprints were actually -- it's really
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interesting, right, because the 800 was considered too far because the women looked too exhausted.
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They didn't look basically pretty enough as they were crossing the finish line. But that's so funny
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to me now when you look at it because the 100 meter isn't one of the most intense, explosive
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races there is. So yes, I mean, it doesn't make a lot of sense. And of course, now we're coming
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to realize from a sports science perspective that women's bodies are actually better at these longer
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endurance races, that we have some advantages on average when you compare men and women just in
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terms of being able to continue endurance events longer with tiring a little bit less and things
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like that. Nathan Hunt So your story about the 800 meters at the 1928 Olympics. This was -- well,
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this was one of the moments where I put down the book and I went and found my wife and I
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just harangued her on this story, and you will tell it better than I will. It's not the race
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itself because the race went off and it happened. It was what happened on the reporting of the race
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that really shocks me, and I'm wondering if you can talk about that a little. Maggie Mertens Yes.
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A lot of the research that I did for the book because women athletes, for all of the above
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reasons, haven't been covered very well or are -- didn't leave behind a lot of information. A lot of
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the research I kind of depended on was newspaper archives, and that was just a really interesting
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experience. When I was looking at the 1928 Olympics and the 800-meter race in particular,
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because I kept seeing, even in contemporary reporting, because there are still differences,
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of course, in many sports around distance and around kind of these ideas of what women can and
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can't do. And I would often see sort of reported alongside these as the reason behind some of this
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difference was we could trace it back to this 1928 800-meter race win. All of these women collapsed
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afterwards. And the media thought and the IOC thought that this meant that women weren't up
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to it. And as I dug into that a bit and started speaking with some academics and researchers
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who had looked at this race and there were so many questions around why was this reported
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in this way? Because as I pulled up article after article, it's so fascinating because each one
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explains some terrible thing that happened, but in a very different way, right? And not even any
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of them agree on how many women were even in this final when it began. Nobody reported on
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the fact that like 6 out of the 9 women actually broke the current world record for the 800 meter.
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Instead, we got quotes about women collapsing, women convulsing, women needing medical attention,
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women being carried off the track, women passing out later in the locker room even. And so of
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course, I think as a journalist, that just starts to kind of raise some red flags if things aren't
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lining up in terms of reporting. And what I also found super interesting about that was then going
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back a bit and looking at even the coverage of -- because this was the first time women's track and
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field was even at the Olympics, how that idea was covered in those before the Olympics even began.
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And you had a lot of this kind of sense that the press was already fear mongering around
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what this was going to do to our women before it even started. So that really played into,
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I think, some of these reports. Of course, we don't know all of the details, but we do have
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photos and even some video evidence that this race was actually pretty normal for the time.
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Everyone seemed upright and walking around as far as I could tell right after the race. So lots of
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misinformation early on. But yes, the press played a really important role, I think, in upholding
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those ideas about femininity. Nathan Hunt Another sort of important story that you develop
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in more detail than I've ever read it before is sort of the history of women in the marathon,
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right? The marathon is full of myth anyway, right? The idea of the marathon race is actually based
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on a myth and actually a misunderstanding of a myth. But the idea that women weren't capable
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of running the marathon, even after they ran marathons, right? So you have these wonderful
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stories of women hiding in the bushes, as the Boston -- this woman hiding in the bushes,
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is the Boston Marathon starts and jumping out and running the whole thing and finishing and
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that somehow not being evidence that a woman could run a marathon and just how long that was fought
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for. And to me, the story there is really about -- it's about the organization that runs the Boston
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Marathon. It's about the IOC. It is organizations refusing to confront reality. Maggie Mertens Yes.
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Nathan Hunt What is it about organizations like the IOC that makes them unable to just acknowledge
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that a group of women just ran a marathon, and we could do that at the Olympics? What is it? What
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is that conflict? Maggie Mertens Well, so Bobbi Gibb give was the first woman to unofficially run
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the Boston Marathon. That happened in 1966. I will point out that the first woman to join the IOC did
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not happen until 1981. And so we have pretty much an entirely male sporting organization,
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and I think that has to do with a lot of it. Even in the '80s, we had like 75% to 80% male
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athletes in the Olympics. That was just -- it was just a very male institution. And that progress
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happened so slowly, right? And again, it was one of those things of we'll give the women this much,
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but we're not going to -- it was often framed as taking away opportunities for men if we're
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going to add events for women, right? Because the charter also has this very strange thing in terms
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of like limiting the number of athletes that can participate in the Olympics. And so it's always
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kind of a give-and-take game. And yes, I mean, even going into those 1984 Olympics, so in -- they
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actually ended up voting the marathon in 1981. And they also did not have a 5,000-meter race
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yet. They did not have a 10,000-meter race yet. This was the first year that they were running the
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1,500, I think. And so that -- it was just a very, very slow progress. And I think a lot of that has
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to do with the fact that these men were running these sporting institutions as institutions for
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men. And giving women opportunities was still seen as kind of this little consolation prize,
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if you will. And okay, well, maybe -- I mean we see it even today, right? Even in the
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past -- I mean, you mentioned in your intro about broadcast deals and things like that. And I mean,
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these numbers have changed drastically just in the last 3, 4 years. And so it's really, I think,
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an example of institutions will not change until they're forced to, right? And even in the last 5,
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10 years, there have been economists saying there is money being left on the table here in terms of
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women's sports. And these institutions are too, I guess, tied to old ideas and traditional ideas
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about what's important and what will make money and what people want to see. It just takes a
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hand being forced. And I think the story of the women's marathon in the Olympics is so important
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because these women really came together and did it for themselves, right? They organized
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like crazy. Kathrine Switzer and Jacqueline Hansen and all of these women who came together
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and started their own organization, started their own marathons and literally went to every member
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of these voting committees to sway them. Went to doctors, went to sports scientists and said,
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fine, we'll do these studies so that we can prove we're not going to die or have any ill effects by
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running these races even though, yes, the proof is already there. We've already been running them,
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but they really pushed and pushed and pushed until they could not be denied. And I think that,
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that you're seeing a similar thing happen in women's basketball and things like that where
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these women are doing it for themselves, right? They're making their own social media presences,
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be super valuable so that people can see, okay, there is value in this game. Nathan Hunt So
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another recurring theme throughout the book is it comes down to a definition of what is femininity,
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right? And the definition that keeps coming back is a very specific definition of
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attractive and white, preferably blond, frail, femininity becomes the only acceptable form of
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femininity for athletes to display. And so if an athlete is all, if an athlete is strong,
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if an athlete is black, all of those things become evidence of sort of this loss of gender
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difference. And I am wondering, as you were -- certainly, well, I was reading the book,
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but as you were writing the book and you would come across these news articles where
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an athlete of the quality of Mary Decker was reduced to, don't know what to call it,
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the male gaze, let's call it. How did you feel about that? How did you feel reading these old
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articles and just seeing over and over again women being objectified? Maggie Mertens Made me
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angry and sad. I think a lot of the experience of athletes, especially in that era of Mary Decker,
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I grew up in the '90s and I was 100% in, the male gaze was the most important thing that any girl or
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woman needed to know about and our bodies were important only if they conformed to particular
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standards and thinness was just the peak of everything, right? It was apparently what everyone
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should be thinking about all of the time. And I think that's very familiar for a lot of women
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of just these -- the late 20th century. And of course, to have that be sort of reflected back,
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even when talking about these athletes, is really sad because -- especially when you end up knowing
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how much pain and injury a lot of these messages were causing athletes of this era and still do.
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But we ended up sort of prioritizing these ideas about what an athlete should look like, what a
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woman athlete should look like over what actually is healthy for a female able, what actually drives
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performance for a female athlete and especially runners, gymnasts, people like that. I'd like to
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point out a lot that look at the shift in how the U.S. gymnastic team, the women's gymnastic team
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look from the '90s -- '80s and '90s when we have these tiny prepubescent girls almost entirely to
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today, we have Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles who are so strong and older, right, like they
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are adult women who are strong and athletic and not just prized because they are tiny and small
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and look this way that we think that they should look. And so I do think we're making progress on
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that front. But for sure, looking back on those messages and also, of course, it sort of relates
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to -- it brings up the messages I was raised with and some of those things that are really hard for,
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I think, a lot of women to shake. It was really upsetting. And then as you kind of move into,
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even today, how women athletes are questioned, right, about their gender if they don't conform to
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certain physical attributes that in and of itself is also very upsetting because it starts to make
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you -- I mean, it does start to make you wonder how much of your own physical body and the way
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that you present to the world is because of you or because of what you're conforming to, right, and
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what you are worried about being perceived by. Nathan Hunt So Maggie, one of the challenges in,
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I think it was the second to last chapter, is a definition around what makes a woman. And this has
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become hugely controversial in sport. There is the idea that you're only a woman if your testosterone
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is at a certain level. You're only a woman if you were born with that sexual identity. There is
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laws in the book that you referenced all over the United States that ban transgender athletes from
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participating in women's events. There's a balance here, right, and it's hard balance, which is,
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on the one hand, women have worked hard to have their own sports leagues and to create a sphere
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for female accomplishment. And that's amazing and awesome, right? And on the other hand, that can
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easily turn into something that is exclusionary to people who don't fit into tidy definitions. How do
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you balance those 2 for yourself? Maggie Mertens Yes. So I think the first thing for me is that
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I love women's sports. I think women's sports has changed my life. Just as like a sports fan,
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I am so happy to have that women's sports to watch. It's made me just a lot more engaged as
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a sports fan, a lot happier. I feel like I have to kind of -- I don't have to resign some of my
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ethics as much when I watch women's sports as when I was watching more men's professional sports,
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and I love that. I also think it's a very special thing, and I will die on the hill that it is just
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as impressive and just as a leap for a woman to be performing at the top of her sport as for a man
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to be performing at the top of his. And I don't think women have to beat men or perform better
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than men on certain metrics to be considered equals. I think they are. I think they're just
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as impressive, if not more. And yes, at the same time, I do think having a sports world that is
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defined by a binary that doesn't really exist in sex and certainly not in gender is becoming
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more and more exclusionary. And I don't think that's okay. I think if anything, my feeling
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is sports should always be inclusive, I think, especially these laws that are aimed at children,
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at youth sports, at school sports. The point of youth in school sports is inclusion. The
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point is for everyone to have the opportunity to participate. And I think the issue now is getting
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around the fear, right? Like we talked about the fear of women becoming manly, and we've gotten
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past that, right, for the most part. And I think we also need to get beyond the fear that women's
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sports is going to go away for some reason if we decide to be more inclusive around gender,
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around women who are born with sex differences, women who are born intersex, transgender women
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and men, I think, and non-binary individuals. I think we're going to need a more expansive
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sporting world in the future. And I think that's okay, like I think that's going to be fun. And I
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don't think that means we have to get rid of Title IX or the WNBA or the women's college basketball
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tournament. I think that will be more exciting, if anything, because we will have more opportunity to
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see these elite athletes and maybe think more broadly and expansively around what being an
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athlete means and what our physical bodies are capable of without having to constantly define
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it based on sex or gender. Nathan Hunt I think one of the things I found exciting about that chapter
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was that there is so much heated rhetoric on that topic and such an absence of fact. And as you dug
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into the medical research around the range of testosterone levels you would see in women,
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the actual value of testosterone for athletic performance, which is in no sense a settled
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issue. The performance of transgender athletes supposedly being completely unfair and they just
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dominate and then you actually -- in the example you shared from Connecticut showed that sometimes
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they win, sometimes they lose. I just -- I was heartened to read some facts rather than opinion.
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It's just -- it's so rare in this area. It's something that, for some reason, we just argue
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from emotion. Maggie Mertens Yes, yes. And I think it's because people feel very emotional around it,
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right? And I don't want to invalidate that. I think sports is very emotional and women's sports,
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in particular, especially for women who have done this work to fight so hard to be taken seriously
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as very emotional. But yes, I think when you look at the facts, it's very -- it's sometimes
36:32
very surprising, right, that we have all of these new rules. I mean this Olympic games,
36:39
women who have any kind of DSD, any kind of difference in sex development in terms
36:48
of being born intersects or having particular hormonal levels that are considered too high,
36:55
they are not allowed to participate in track and field, in many of these other Olympic sports and
37:02
transgender athletes are not at all. And that's really interesting when you look at -- actually,
37:07
transgender athletes were allowed to compete for years. They had to meet certain definitions and
37:17
beyond hormone replacement therapy for a certain amount of time. But that didn't cause any kind of
37:25
overwhelming takeover when they were allowed. So it definitely feels very rooted in this,
37:32
yes, in this feeling as opposed to the facts. And I think there was even a recent study done
37:40
that came out either right after the book was published or right before that actually showed
37:44
that most transgender athletes have a disadvantage because you are learning to use a whole new body
37:52
often at a later age. Your hormone replacement therapy is not really easy or great on the body,
37:59
sometimes that can cause a lot of changes. And if you're an elite athlete, that's
38:05
something that's going to impact you pretty extensively. And so I find it really -- yes,
38:12
I hope we get to a point where more people are receptive to the facts and receptive to these
38:19
studies that are coming out as opposed to kind of institutionally putting in rules that are released
38:28
on fear and mythology. Nathan Hunt So Maggie, I want to end on a positive note. You are a runner.
38:36
You are a fan of women's sports. When you look forward to the upcoming Olympic Games in Paris,
38:46
what running events and what athletes are you most excited about watching? Maggie Mertens Oh my
38:53
goodness. Well, Sha'Carri Richardson is like my #1 this Olympic because I'm so excited for her. I was
39:01
so extremely bummed when she was cut from the team in 2020. And she is just so herself, and I love
39:12
that. And I love that you didn't let that setback in 2020 impact her, like she'd been through so
39:20
much and to come back and just be even stronger. I mean, 4 years later, she is just the top of the
39:27
world and I love that. I'm very excited for her. I'm also -- I'm a big fan of the marathon. I love
39:34
to watch the marathon. I know people think it's maybe a boring thing to watch. But actually,
39:39
the Olympic marathon is pretty great because it goes quick. It's like a basketball game. It's
39:45
not that long because these people are running very fast. So I'm really excited about that. And
39:54
I'm also excited about Nikki Hiltz. Nikki Hiltz is going to be the first non-binary athlete to
40:01
participate in the Olympic Games. They're running the 10,000. And I love their story in particular
40:09
because they were running in the elite women's circuit for a long time. And once they came out
40:17
as non-binary and started using the pronouns that fit them, they have exploded as a runner and are
40:26
so much more joyful and so much more successful. And I think that's just such a beautiful story of
40:33
embracing your true self and being able to compete better, too, which is really wonderful. So yes,
40:39
I'm very excited for the Olympics. Very excited to have a break from politics
40:45
for a couple of weeks. Nathan Hunt Absolutely. So the book once again is, "Better, Faster, Farther:
40:53
How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women." Maggie, thank you so much for joining
41:00
me on the podcast today. Maggie Mertens Thank you, Nathan. This was really fun. Nathan Hunt The
41:05
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