BMX: The team of Latvia of the project “Training to Win” continues to work

1 35Although only the calendar tells about the beginning of the summer, not the weather outside the window, the Latvian team of the BMX project "Training to Win" continues to be active On May 27, during the meeting of LSIIDP representatives Sandija Zalupe and Līva Tauriņa, as well as Smiltene Children's and Youth Sports School coach Renārs Auga, the achievements of the project so far were discussed, as well as work on the development of the BMX coach training program was continued. Representatives from each Member State work on their own training program topics. Our team is responsible for "Improving the start-up technique", "BMX competitions" and "BMX season planning" and developing the training methodology.

The training program will serve as a guide for BMX trainers, providing both theoretical knowledge and practical solutions in photo and video format during training and competitions. The aim of the project is to promote education in sport, with a special focus on the development of the skills needed for BMX sport and the training of coaches to improve the safety of sporting careers and young athletes.

The project involves partners: the Board of Directors of Latvian Sports Education Institutions (Latvia), CLUB BMX School - Zaragoza (Spain), Universidad San Jorge (Spain), UVP - Federação Portuguesa de Ciclismo (Portugal), CEIPES (Italy), SZC - Slovensky Zvaz Cyklistiky (Slovakia) and Malta Street Sports Association (Malta).

Project "Training to Win" is co-funded by European Union.

PHOTO

Take a look at the project website: https://trainingtowin.eu/






SWOST: Great examples of women competing against men, June 2022

Billy Jean King vs Bobby Riggs

In 1973, pros Billy Jean King and Bobby Riggs faced off in a tennis game that became known as the famous “The Battle of the Sexes.” Fifty million people in the U.S. and 90 million worldwide watched 29-year-old King play against 55-year-old Riggs at the Houston Astrodome. King made a stunning comeback after falling behind during the first set. She won all three sets, winning 6 to 3 in the third set.

King went on to lead the fight for women’s equality in tennis, forcing the U.S. Open to pay equal prize money for women as far back as 1973. This was an incredible achievement, especially when you consider that Wimbledon and Roland-Garros didn’t offer equal prizes until well into the next century. Fellow tennis legend Martina Navratilova summed up King’s contribution when she described her as “a crusader fighting a battle for all of us.

Karsten Braasch vs the Williams Sisters

During the 1998 Australian Open, sisters Serena and Venus Williams boasted that they could beat any man ranked outside the world’s top 200. The challenge was accepted by Karsten Braasch, a German player ranked No 203 (his highest ranking was No 38).
He defeated Serena, 6-1, and Venus, 6-2. Serena said afterwards “I didn’t know it would be that hard. I hit shots that would have been winners on the women’s tour and he got to them easily.

Danica Patrick Breaks Barriers At NASCAR

Danica Patrick is not only considered the most successful woman in the history of American car racing. Stock car racing since her youth, Patrick won the Indy Japan 300 in 2008, becoming the first and only woman to win an IndyCar Series race. In 2009, Patrick placed third in the Indianapolis 500 and marked the highest finish by a female driver in that race. In 2013, she became the first female NASCAR driver to take a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series.

Carissa Moore Scores Surfing Title

Carissa Moore has won several women’s competitions, but her most important victory came in 2007 when she won the Quicksilver King of the Groms event against male competitors. In 2011, Moore was the first female to earn a wild card entry spot into the Men’s Triple Crown of Surfing.

Moore has also inducted into the Surfers’ Hall of Fame.

Surfing is another sport that has helped lift gender barriers. The World Surf League is the first US-based global sporting league to offer equal pay to male and female competitors. Surfing will also make an Olympic debut at Tokyo 2020.

RSE: Project "Restart Sport Engine in EU" concludes with conference in Kalamata

90525C39 266F 4181 B332 6682FC9D5434The Erasmus + Sport program project “Restart Sport Engine in EU” is coming to an end, in which LSIIDP actively worked as a partner together with K.A.NE. (Greek), Ajuntament Beniganim (Spain), Fondation Alice Miiat (France) under the leadership of the Scout Society (Romania). To look back at the project, all participants met in Kalamata, Greece, on May 18-19.

The Latvian team organized various activities within the project - remote running and cycling competitions (the “remote” format was dictated by pandemic restrictions at the time), a basketball friendship game for 14-15 year old athletes and basketball relays for the youngest contestants, as well as organized representative participation in the mobility for coaches and athletes. The Latvian side also participated in the development of the project brochure, reporting on the situation in the field of sports in the conditions of a pandemic.

"Finding ways to play sports and competitions at a time when indoor sports were banned, but restrictions on outdoor gatherings did not allow for a full enjoyment of the sporting spirit was a real challenge. But thanks to the excitement of the young athletes, the readiness of the coaches and sports organizers to work in unusual conditions, as well as the ingenuity and effort of the project team, we succeeded, ”says Sandija Zaļupe, LSIIDP project manager.

The aim of the project was to improve people's skills through various sports activities in five project member states - Latvia, Romania, France, Spain and Greece, to improve the skills of coaches, sports teachers, sports volunteers to use innovative sports tools, and to resume sports in Europe after the Covid19 pandemic. The events organized by LSIIDP clearly achieved the goals set in the project, confirming the desire and readiness of young athletes to improve their athletic form with 100% return, compete, win and trainers' ability to motivate the young generation to purposefully engage in physical activity, as well as seek new ways, tools and methods to keep children and young people in the sport they have chosen and to make them strong personalities.

PHOTO and VIDEO of Final conference



Thank you Scout Society for the dedicated leadership and partners for cooperation!

Project website: http://restart.scoutsociety.ro/


SWOST: Sports Where Men And Women Compete Equally, May 2022

Unfortunately there are only a small number of sports where men and women compete against each other equally regardless of sex. In these sports, the physical differences between men and women are deemed not to have any effect on the outcome of any competition.

True Mixed Sex Sports

  • Horse Racing: On the Flat and over jumps, women and men ride and compete against each other equally. And in a recent study it was concluded that female riders perform no better or worse than their male counterparts on horses of similar ability.
  • Equestrian: An Olympic sport in which competitors ride horses, male and female riders compete head top head against each other in eventing, dressage and show jumping disciplines. The reason for this is that the attributes required to be successful are to be a confident and able rider of horses, something in which the sexes don’t differ. Equestrian is the only Olympic event of men and women competing directly head-to-head and the events are dominated by women. It’s estimated that two thirds of the approx 30,000 athletes in the International Equestrian Federation (FEI) database of competitors in the Olympic equestrian are female.
  • Sailing: Men and women compete together in sailing in one particular class, the Nacre 17. All other classes are segregated by sex.
  • Motorbike Racing: Doesn’t have gender barriers and female riders are starting to make a lot of progress in the sports. In September 2017 Ana Carrasco, a 20-year-old from Spain, became the first woman to win a world championship motorcycle race in Portimao, Portugal.
In addition to these sports, there are also sports such as chess, draughts, darts, etc., where men and women compete together, but they cannot be considered as physical sports.

SWOST: Utahns Against Common Core 30.04.2022

The words of Chelsea Mitchell:
"They used to call me 'the fastest girl in Connecticut.' But I couldn’t outrun an injustice.
For four years, I competed as a high school runner and made it to the state championships every one of those years. But in my junior year, I lost four of the state titles I earned to males who identified as females.
They give awards based on who wins—typically the person with the strongest muscles, the greatest lung power, the fastest speed—not based on how a person identifies. At the end of the race, it’s about biology, not gender identity. And no amount of testosterone suppression can change a male’s innate physical advantages, like bone structure and muscle mass.
And fast as I am, I can’t outrun those advantages. Or the injustice that protects them.
For saying that out loud, I’ve been branded by some as a sore loser and a hater. But what I object to has nothing to do with hate.
Female athletes like me make a ton of sacrifices to compete—working tirelessly to shave fractions of seconds off our personal times and giving up what many would consider the "normal" teenage life by watching what we eat, skipping parties for practice, going to bed early to get up early and practice yet again. It becomes almost like a career. And we do all this while working hard to earn scholarship opportunities with preferred colleges and universities.
It’s all worth it to us because we know we stand a chance at victory against our fellow female athletes—but not against those who aren’t biologically female. It’s demoralizing to see all that effort and sacrifice as futile, where we are punished for a biological reality we can’t do anything about.
And that’s what’s been happening on high school and college campuses across America for the last several years. With the permission of coaches and administrators, as well as those in leadership at the National Collegiate Athletic Association, some male athletes have been pushing their way onto women’s sports teams and playing fields. With their physical advantages, they’ve been taking the positions, the wins, and the opportunities so many women and girls have worked so hard—often their entire life—to obtain.
When women protest this—objecting to seeing the rewards for all our hard work go to competitors with a biological edge we can’t hope to overcome—we’re accused of hatred and bigotry. But the issue is fairness. And the people who should be protecting us and defending our rights are letting us down, time after time.
Last fall, it was the International Olympic Committee, making way for male-bodied athletes to more freely compete in women’s sports. This month, it’s the NCAA, offering a complex and confusing list of directives that basically pass the baton to the governing bodies of individual sports. But then USA Track & Field, for example, points to the IOC policy, which points to other national and international bodies. The baton just keeps getting passed round and round and round.
Everyone in leadership seems to want someone else to take responsibility. Many of them are understandably scared that a minority of loud activists are going to take aim at their sport, their school, or them personally. So, they’re throwing female athletes under the bus, hoping we will eventually be quiet and all the commotion will eventually go away.
If it does, women’s sports will become a thing of the past.
There’s no way athletic administrators in every sport can’t see this. If biological males move into women’s competition, they will dominate whatever contests they enter. Eventually, nearly all the titles, all the scholarships, and all the opportunities to compete, earn scholarships and endorsements, and one day maybe even coach will go to the ones with the anatomical edge.
That’s just biological reality, and the leaders of sport are deliberately turning a blind eye to it.
Under Title IX, they have a legal obligation to protect female athletes from this unfairness, but—just like the Connecticut Association of Schools, which I and other girls sued through our attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom—they’re not doing it. And that must mean that the dreams of women, the opportunities for women, the rights of women just don’t matter. On the playing field, or under the law.
Which means there’s a lot more at stake here than a footrace. Or a swimming event. Or an Olympic title. This is about what we think of women in America. This is about what’s safe and fair.
And that’s a responsibility our athletic administrators can’t outrun."