INTERVIEW | WITH BRITISH OLYMPIAN SAVANAH LEAF - FEMALE ROLE MODELS

Had the opportunity to interview British Olympian Savanah Leaf on a subject I'm passionate about and I found her answers really interesting, so enjoy :).

Image from Savanah Leaf

Through my research I've found that female athletes feel pressure to conform to a certain look and body type. Have you ever felt this pressure? Whether is was before you began playing internationally or after. Also where do you think this pressure is coming from?

I  I honestly think that each sport is very different. When you get to a top level, you start to understand your body in certain ways, you realize what your body can and cannot do. A lot of the reason why we become top athletes is because we have the right body type before we even do our sport. Our trainings aids the body type that we were given, for example, I am naturally quite tall and lean. My training has made me stronger and able to control my athleticism. I think I have received more pressure since I've been trying to do fitness modeling. They want really skinny models with lean muscles, which is not necessarily what athletes have. 

Women first took part in the Olympics in 1900 which was well over 100 years ago but there still seems to be an issue of equity. Only 5% of media coverage of sport in the UK is devoted to women, It's no secret that men are seen as the 'stronger gender'. As a professional athlete have you ever felt underestimated or undervalued because you are a female?

Although this is quite sad to admit, I never really expect to get the coverage or support that a male athlete would receive. I have kind of accepted the fact that female athletes have less media coverage. Although i would love this to change, I think it's going to take a while because this has been going on forever. I mean if you think about it, men were the hunters. There are so many aspects that go into this equity problem, and a large portion of that is due to sociological components, but then there are also evolutionary and biological components as well. Let's not forget biology here. But I will say, I have felt undervalued for being a female athlete. In the Olympics, the majority of the messages I received on social media were men talking about my ass, not people talking about how I played. That was really disappointing to me because I didn't work extremely hard for 8 years to entertain people on international television for my looks.. 

By the age of 14, girls drop out of sports at twice the rate boys do, with reasons such as: ''None of my friends play it anymore'', ''Sport is too competitive'' and ''People think its weird''. What/Who motivated and influenced you when you was a teenager playing sport?  

Well I didn't start playing sports till I moved to the U.S. When I was about 9 years old. When I lived in London I was all about music, theatre, and dance. I think if I lived their throughout my childhood I would probably be a singer or something by now. That was mainly because of where I lived, what was accessible to me, and what I loved at the time. When I moved to America, my love for the arts was all of a sudden 'not cool'. All the popular kids were playing sports, and so after some years when I was about 12 I had given up music, theatre, and dance for volleyball and basketball. For me, this whole thing was sort of opposite. I think the people that influenced me most to continue playing were my mum and coaches. I started realizing that sports came naturally to me, and I was a lot better than most people. This made me think about how I could pay for my university in the US by playing sports. So that's what I did, with a huge sacrifice, which was my love for the arts.

How important do you believe female role models in sport are for young girls?

 I think they are extremely important. I mean that's half of my job. I wouldn't do this if I didn't receive some of the feedback that I have had from young girls telling me they want to be just like me, or that they are inspired by my stories, or that they chose their jersey number to copy mine. Positive female role models give younger girls strength to pursue their dreams, and that goes for anything. My mum has been a strong single mother my whole life, and she is that sort of strong independent woman that I look up to. Even though she isn't a professional athlete, I have taken a lot of what she does and used it in my pursuit to become an Olympian and professional athlete.

 Do you have anything else you would like to add?

Nope, great questions !