Cricket icon Belinda Clark has blazed her way into the record books and is just as fearless off the field, paving a way for women in sport.
In the sixth and latest episode of On Side Clark, the first player, male or female, to score a double century in a one-dayer, talks about the highlights of an illustrious career – on and off the field – and the rise and rise of women’s sport.
“I’d like to think that cricket has been at the front of the pack pulling others with us but there’s still a long way to go,” Clark says.
“I’d like to think the next generation of young girls hopefully will grow up knowing very well from the beginning of their life that sport is an option for them as a profession, it’s an option for them as a coach, as a volunteer, and it’ll be a totally different perspective that I perhaps grew up with.”
Inaugural AFLW premiership coach Bec Goddard is another trailblazer for women’s sport.
Just announced as the spearhead of an all-female coaching panel for Hawthorn Football Club’s VFLW team, Goddard has been fighting the male bias for years.
“There is a very frustrating issue at this level,” she says. “It’s this idea of merit and what we define as merit in our industry. So many women are qualified, that have got certificates …. at the decision making level they are getting blocked by these biases.”
We also talk to our Director of Anti-Doping Policy Chris Butler about the changes to the 2021 WAD Code, including those around substances of abuse and our athlete educator Riley McGown answers the question “Are paralympic athletes subject to the same ant-doping rules?”