Archives de catégorie : Sport

UNFAIR PLAY de Sharron Davies & Craig Lord

A legendary Olympian exposes the toxic sexism that threatens women’s sport.

UNFAIR PLAY:
The Battle for Women’s Sport
by Sharron Davies & Craig Lord
Swift Press, April 2023
(via Randle Editorial and Literary)

Despite being more popular than ever, women’s sport is in danger. Modern gender ideology, which denies fundamental differences in human biology, is undermining the integrity of women’s sport.
Sharron Davies has been here before. She missed out on Olympic Gold because of blatant doping among East German athletes in the 1980s. Female athletes are now once again facing an unfair playing field: biological males are being allowed to compete directly against women under the guise of trans ‘self-ID’. This time, the cheating is officially condoned. This callous indifference towards women in sport, argue Sharron and journalist Craig Lord, is merely the latest stage in a long history of official sexism.
Unlike in the past, however, this time female resistance is too strong to ignore. Davies and Lord show how the tide may be turning, and outline how women can win the fight for their rights.

Sharron Davies MBE is a legendary British Olympian, the UK’s top female swimmer throughout the 80s. In 1980, she won Olympic Silver (losing out only to a drugs cheat). She has since become a leading BBC sports pundit.
Craig Lord is an award-winning swimming and Olympic correspondent, who’s been writing for The Times for three decades.

GOOD FOR A GIRL de Lauren Fleshman

A memoir and manifesto about women and sports, told through the experiences of a highly decorated runner. From the time Lauren first laced up her sneakers to out-sprint the boys in her neighborhood, though puberty when half of all girls abandon sports for good, and into elite running where she had to be “fast and fuckable” to fit into the Nike machine, Lauren felt she was bumping into a system that was not made for her.

GOOD FOR A GIRL:
A Life Running In A Man’s World
by Lauren Fleshman
‎ Penguin Press, TBD 2022
(via Levine, Greenberg, Rostan)

Lauren Fleshman is very, very good at running. She was a two-time USA Champion, finished 7th in the world, and is widely known for having a devastating (but entertaining to watch) finishing kick. For the past 25 years, she can now clearly see that at every step of the way she was bumping up against a system that was never made for her. This is a #metoo story that follows Lauren while she racked up the miles:

● From puberty, where sports diverge by gender, where boys develop the types of bodies sports were designed around, and 50% of girls quit.
● To college, where she entered a system built by and for men, one full of cracks to fall through and landmines to step on, that refused to acknowledge and account for the different physiology of women who were consistently hurting themselves to fit in.
● To being a professional runner for Nike where she learned that she needed to be Fast and Fuckable to succeed in their marketing machinery.

Running is the highest participatory sport in the world, and women are taking it over. In one generation we’ve gone from being pulled off the Boston marathon course for the crime of running while female to making up 60% of the 59 million Americans who run and the 18 million who race. It’s a women’s sport now, and we are only just beginning to realize it.

Lauren Fleshman is considered one of the greatest distance runners in USA history. Her professional racing career saw two USA Championship Titles and five World Championship berths for Team USA. She is endeared as much for her failures as her accomplishments, because of her unique approach to sport and legacy in the running community. Her influence has remained strong since retiring from elite racing in 2016, when she transitioned to Head Coach of Little Wing Athletics, the only woman led, woman run, woman sponsored professional running team in the world. Lauren currently serves on the Board of Directors for USATF, advocating for better governance, safe sport, and the protection of athlete’s rights.

TIBETAN YOGA d’Alejandro Chaoul

Discover ancient Tibetan yogic practices that integrate body, breath, and mind on the journey to personal cultivation and enlightenment.

TIBETAN YOGA
by Alejandro Chaoul
Wisdom Publications, November 2021

TIBETAN YOGA offers accessible instructions for performing the ancient yogic techniques of Tibet’s Bön religion. This is Tibetan yoga, or trul khor, a deeply authentic yogic practice. Drawing on thirty years of training with Bön’s most senior masters as well as advanced academic study, Dr. Alejandro Chaoul offers expert guidance on practices that were first developed by Bön masters over a millennium ago, framing them according to the needs of contemporary yoga practitioners and meditators.
No matter their level of experience, dedicated practitioners of Tibetan yoga will discover its ability to clear away obstacles and give rise to meditative states of mind.

Dr. Alejandro Chaoul is a senior teacher at The 3 Doors, an international organization founded by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche with the goal of transforming lives through meditation. He has studied Tibetan yoga for thirty years with the Bön tradition’s greatest masters, including the late H. H. Lungtok Tenpai Nyima, Yongdzin Tenzin Namdak, and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, having trained in Triten Norbutse Monastery in Nepal and Menri Monastery in India. He completed the seven-year training at Ligmincha International and received his PhD in Tibetan Religions from Rice University. Dr. Chaoul is the founding director of the Mind, Body, Spirit Institute at The Jung Center of Houston. He is the author of Chöd Practice in the Bon Tradition and Tibetan Yoga for Health and Well-Being.

ZWISCHEN DURCHKOMMEN UND UMKOMMEN de Reinhold Messner

« Old-school alpinism is the art of survival in a place not fit for humans » Reinhold Messner

ZWISCHEN DURCHKOMMEN UND UMKOMMEN:
(Meeting the Challenge or Meeting One’s End)
by Reinhold Messner
Ludwig/Penguin Random House Verlagsgruppe, October 2021

Old-school mountaineers confront the unknown with courage and self-sufficiency. They go where no one else dares to go, and take unbelievable risks. Ever since man first stood on top of Mont Blanc in 1786, they have continuously pushed the boundaries of the supposedly impossible. Reinhold Messner’s new book is a memorial to those pioneers, a history of traditional mountaineering told through the stories of its most celebrated heroes, often in their own words. Messner’s incisive essays reveal the mental and physical qualities needed to achieve what they did: qualities such as courage and passion, self-reliance in the face of danger, and the ability to focus on important things – and the refusal to use technically sophisticated gear.
In ZWISCHEN DURCHKOMMEN UND UMKOMMEN, Messner pays tribute to the human thirst for adventure and exploration, intimate encounters with nature, and climbing mountains without a safety net or ‘false bottoms’ – and calls on us to keep the legacy alive.

Reinhold Messner, born in 1944, is the most famous mountaineer and adventurer of our time. He was the first person to reach the top of all fourteen eight-thousanders, as well as the first to climb Everest solo and, together with Peter Habeler, the first to do so without supplemental oxygen. He has also crossed the Antarctic, Greenland and the Gobi desert on foot. He gives talks all over the world, is a documentary filmmaker, contributes to major international magazines, and has published countless books which have been translated into numerous languages. His most recent book was the 2019 « Nanga Parbat – Mein Schlüsselberg » (« Nanga Parbat – Paragon and Nemesis »), published by Ludwig.