How to Help Women and Girl Athletes Thrive

Casey Legler at the 1996 Olympics. Photo by Jean-Yves Ruszniewski/TempSport/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images

It starts with reducing abuse, writes former Olympic swimmer Casey Legler.

American gymnast Rachael Joy Denhollander was 15 when her team doctor, Larry Nassar, abused her. She reported it immediately—nothing was done. This was in 2000. Sixteen years later, in 2016, she filed a Title IX complaint, another formal complaint with the Michigan State University police department, and then shared her story with the Indianapolis Times. Denhollander had to become a lawyer—and countless additional young girls had to come forward—to finally do what the adults around her at the time should have done: deliver Nassar to justice.

I was similarly abused at 14, and did not speak up.

On the French National and Olympic swimming teams I belonged to in the 1990s, we all knew the swimmers who were “with” the coaches—15- or 16-year-old girl athletes being groomed from 12 to have sex with men in their early thirties who had been trusted to create a thriving athletic environment for them. If we, the young athletes, knew this was happening, it’s hard to believe the adults didn’t either. Now, as a parent myself, I find it inconceivable. 

When I began writing this story—on the eve of the 2024 Olympics in Paris—I was asked to address how we can best protect young girls and women in sports. I felt irritated by the premise: young women do not need protecting. They are fierce, creative, strong, competitive, intelligent, and deserve to not be interfered with, at the very least. Ideally, and apparently unimaginably, they deserve to thrive. And while “everyone watches women's sports” today, Danne Diamond, three-time US National Muay Thai champion and LGBTQI+ sports policy expert, reminds us that “the power we’re seeing has been built on decades of unimaginable perseverance and resilience.” The statistics are still not good: According to a 2023 UN Women report, one in every four young girl athletes experiences some sort of sexual abuse in sport at least once, and if my experience is anything to go by, these numbers are likely underreported.

Other industries have established protections for working children. In Hollywood, for example, qualified studio teachers and child labor coordinators are required by law to ensure the safety, education, and welfare of minors. These child advocates report to the state of California or their respective departments of labors, and are certified and trained to work with young people. They must also abide by the federal child labor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Yet in professional sports, there is no equivalent. That I’m even looking to Hollywood for a positive example of best practice indicates how far we have to go—and how deeply we have abandoned the duty of care to young athletes.

Meanwhile, in the United States, attention to the real problems of sexual and physical abuse has been replaced by false outrage about trans athletes. Nothing irks me more than a parent (or politician) calling “unfairness” when the one trans athlete playing at the state level out-performs their kid—and their kid is honestly just not that good to begin with—and then proceeds to call for a statewide ban of trans athletes. Under the false veil of feminism to “protect women’s sports,” this myopic focus on the very few trans athletes at Division I schools or on the international stage continues to perpetuate the policing of young women’s bodies, and is totally irrelevant to the success of women and girl athletes. When legislation is passed at the international or national sporting level in response to one trans athlete, there is no benefit to anyone. There is only cruel and real harm caused to children—young folks already at higher risk of suicide and self-harm—who are now being excluded from something they love and which benefits their mental health. The so-called threat of trans athletes to women’s sports is not real—but it serves as a red herring to the far more dangerous, nefarious, and unfair practices in sports that require urgent change.

Photo by Carsten Rehder/picture alliance via Getty Images

That change has been slow to come. My own sport offers a case study. Until very recently the only requirement for becoming a U.S. coach was a desire and interest (at the amateur level), and some experience in the sport (at the professional level). I swam under Coach Jack Nelson, whose only qualification for coaching was having been a swimmer. He was accused of abusing girls, including the great Diana Nyad, at the Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale. Though he was first reported in the early 1970s, and Nyad first spoke publicly about the abuse in 1989, the accusations were ignored, and in 1993 he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. It was only after watching the movie Nyad that I discovered Nelson’s history. With hindsight I am so grateful that, in 1994, I was a six-foot-two, violent, very fast, and alcoholic athlete—not easy prey. Many other young athletes were not that lucky.  

It wasn’t until 2006 that background checks were required for US coaches (they are still not required for competition marshals—the adults who keep time and officiate). It wasn’t until 2019 that the US Center for SafeSport mandated that all governing bodies of all sporting codes implement Minor Abuse Prevention Policies (MAAPP). And while the US Swimming Federation launched a minor abuse prevention program in 2010 (too late), it wasn’t until 2019 that US Swimming implemented a policy that all interactions between a minor and any adult in a position of authority must be “observable and interruptible.” These obvious protective measures hardly deserve a pat on the back, but they do create an environment in which, finally, other adults are obligated to not look away from a closed door. It does not take a long bow to draw the connection between this myopic view of what defines a thriving environment for young girls, and the fact that the head coach for the Olympic Women’s Swimming Team is a man and there is only one female assistant coach—Carol Capitani of the University of Texas—among the team’s other eleven male assistant coaches. This indicates a complete failure of the imagination on what it takes for young women and girl athletes to thrive. 

Australia has done slightly better. In 2021, an Independent Panel Investigation into swimming concluded that there were “issues related to women and young girls’ experience in the sport of swimming.” Issues. Australia has for decades implemented measures requiring visibility of all interactions between young athletes and adults, but it identified areas that needed to improve. One recommendation points out the total absence of specific knowledge of women’s bodies, particularly menstrual cycles, in all existing coaching certification programs; another recommends a mental health accreditation for coaches (we require it of most other professions in regular contact with children, why wouldn’t we of coaches?). A third recommendation dissuaded coaches from using Body Mass Index (BMI) as a performance indicator, and requires all athlete health data to be acquired privately—very different than when I was growing up: we were all weighed, measured and shamed in the weight room with the entire swim team present.

There are 47 recommendations like this in the Australian report. I’ll end with two. Recommendation 19 seeks to redress the rampant self-harm within Swim Australia by implementing penalties for any coach found in breach of guidelines. Finally, young girls across Australia—swimming or not—have apparently been so damaged by Swim Australia’s use of BMIs that Recommendation 20 urges the organization to issue a public statement acknowledging that the practice of assessing body composition is harmful. There are no policies like this in U.S. swimming. Meanwhile, Swim Australia has issued a mandate to never again have all-male coaching teams in international or national competitions—although, despite that, there are just two women coaches on the country’s ten-coach Olympic team this year. (And it's worth noting that they’re marathon swim coaches, an almost entirely different sport than the pool swimming we all know.) 

So, what can we do to ensure a thriving environment for young women and girls at the professional level? The Australian recommendations are a start—but they also indicate a deficient imagination when it comes to young women and girls. That all of them only seek out negative, corrective measures to harm being done indicates how far we still have to go. The real progress will come when we support women coaches and the change they can help usher in. The only sporting nation in the world with a girl-specific training, coaching, and recruiting environment is New Zealand (incidentally led by the phenom sports executive Raelene Castle ONZM). Similarly, we should all feel deeply disturbed by the ongoing and comfortable display of passive white supremacy when we see that the entire swimming squad for both the U.S. and Australia are, yet again, almost entirely white. 

Of course, sporting bodies as they exist today, from the National Teams to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to the International Sports Federation (IF), are extensions of a social apparatus—infused with racism, patriarchy, and colonialism. This is where our focus should be, and where our leaps of imagination should work together in creating a future in which young girls and athletes are allowed to thrive in the sport they love. When they do, the results are thrilling. We have learned this profoundly by watching the WNBA in the United States. They’ve managed to remain radical in their collective bargaining agreement and in their politics, all while maintaining their irreverence. (As four-time All Star and 2024 All-Star MVP Arike Ogunbowale put it, “If you’re not down with the physicality of the W, you should go watch golf.”) And as the WNBA has shown, putting money and care and structural change into women’s and young girls’ sports pays dividends.

Imagine what all young athletes, who thrive in spite of their oppressive training environments, could do if not held back. We should all be so lucky to behold their glory, speed and precision. Now that would be fun.