Altering the Narrative of Champions: Recognition, Excellence, Fairness, and Inclusion

This paper is an examination of the concept of recognition and its connection with identity and respect. This is related to the question of how women are or are not adequately recognised or respected for their achievements in sport and whether eliminating sex segregation in sport is a solution. This will require an analysis of the concept of excellence in sport, as well as the relationship between fairness and inclusion in an activity that is fundamentally about bodily movement. I argue that attempts to address the problem of women's recognition in sport need to do so in ways that neither eliminate sport as a fairness-regulated system for developing individual excellence in bodily movement nor that prevent women's achievement of sporting excellence, with the regard that belongs to them. Doing this requires us to decide whether sport is about champions or about individual excellence.