Andy Murray’s appointment of Amelie Mauresmo as his coach to replace Ivan Lendl is another step in the normalisation of Women taking on key roles within sport.
She is not the only woman to coach in the men’s game but she is only the second ever of a player ranked in the Top 10. Tatiana Naumko coached Russia’s Andrei Chesnokov in the 1990’s.
Tennis has generally been to the fore in terms of raising the debate about Women in sport. From the Battle of the Sexes between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs in 1973, through to ongoing questions over parity of prize money.
The Billie Jean King event “prominently affected the way 50 percent of society thinks and feels about itself in the vast area of physical exercise,” as Frank Deford wrote at the time in Sports Illustrated.
More recently the decision of Grand Slam tournaments to pay equal prize money was hailed as a positive step despite significant back biting over how many sets are played. It masked the fact though that in a recent survey of prize money throughout the rest of the game, Women still lagged Men by 23.4%.
Mauresmo’s appointment is more important, other than for Murray, in what it represents rather than who she is.
Last month France broke ground in soccer with the appointment of Helena Costa to manage Clermont, a first in the top two divisions of the major European Leagues.
We have our own heroes in Ireland with Katie Taylor gathering widespread acclaim and respect this weekend winning her 16th major Title at the European Boxing Championships.
These are great achievements and yet it will only be when we do not write about them as ‘groundbreaking’ for being by Women that we will have really reached a point of normality in our quest for parity of esteem between Men’s and Women’s sport.
