Female athletes speak out against Nike

[PJsatMidday]

Here are accounts from 3 awesome women.

These athletes allege they were all subject to the rank sexism of Nike. They have all given interviews to the New York Times on Youtube.

This promising junior athlete became suicidal because of their demands for her to lose weight:

This US National Champion athlete was threatened with the loss of her contract because she wanted to have a child:

And here is the incredible multi gold medal winner Allyson Felix talking about Nike's lack of maternity protection; as a consequence, this incredible woman is not under contract:

Nike has a lot of explaining to do. However, the backlash following these incredible women speaking out is making Nike change their policies.

As an addendum, Allyson Felix is under contract with another company now, Athleta, who do not discriminate against her because of her pregnancy.

Disappointed in Nike. It’s not like they are short of cash!

Very powerful videos.

Do we know if anything has happened with Nike vis a vis maternity since Felix and Montano made their videos back in May? Or did Nike just hope it would all go away?

Very telling that Cain's video says Nike have only acted because of Salazar's guilt in the doping scandal, not because of what they did to her.

This sort of crap seems to be endemic across a lot of women's sports - I remember reading this book on skating and gymnastics (with the same concerns over weight and resulting impacts on bone density that Cain suffered):
www.goodreads.com/book/show/76355.Little_Girls_in_Pretty_Boxes

According to this article, Nike have changed their policies on maternity:

www.bbc.co.uk/sport/athletics/49380550

I doubt they would have done so but for someone as high profile as Feli speaking out.

For some reason, I can't type FELIX

Hats off to Allyson Felix for fighting for this - always impressive when sportswomen still in the game take the risk of speaking out (I also massively admire retired sportswomen taking up the fight - but the ones still competing generally have more to lose).