Nine women who graduated from a unique mentorship and training programme to boost women’s elite coaching, run by the University of Hertfordshire, are about to take part in the Winter Olympics (The Milano-Cortina Games, 6-22 February).
The nine women, from seven different countries, are graduates of the Women in Sport High-Performance (WISH) programme. WISH is led by the University of Hertfordshire, supported by the International Olympic Committee’s Olympic Solidarity department, and delivered by Females Achieving Brilliance (FAB).
Its purpose is to support the Olympic Movement’s drive to achieve gender equality in high-performance sport. Specifically, WISH aims to tackle the imbalance of women’s elite coaches which remains at around 13%, despite the progress that has been made toward gender equity among athletes with Milano-Cortina set to be the most gender-balanced Winter Olympics in history. So far 120 women have graduated from the 21-month leadership programme from 22 sports and 59 countries.
Three of the coaches in Milan and Cortina are involved with the Bobsleigh/Skeleton event, one (Elfje Willemsen) as the Swiss team’s coach, while Ticu Elena Sorina is the team leader for the Romanian bobsleigh and luge Olympic team. The third, Joska le Conte, is the head coach and technical director for the Dutch team.
Two more WISH graduates are involved with the biathlon event for Canada and Latvia, and the remaining three women are the Italian Federica Tonon who is an event supervisor, her compatriot Nadia Bortoluzzi is departures manager for both the Olympics and the Paralympics, while Jacqueline Stark is team leader for the Austrian ski team.
In addition to those holding coaching and leadership roles, Britain’s Jennifer Dodds is a WISH graduate who continues to compete while developing her coaching career. Dodds will be at the Games competing in the curling event, for which she already holds the gold-medal, having been part of the winning team in the previous Winter Olympics in Beijing 2022.
“When the Winter Games were here in 2018, around 10 per cent of the coaches were women,” she said. “But looking around now, there’s at least six to eight female coaches sitting on the bench at the curling, so that’s already an improvement. Hopefully we can keep boosting that number, and programmes like WISH can definitely help with that.”
Professor Elizabeth Pike, who is the Global Winner of the 2024 International Olympic Committee (IOC) Gender Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (GEDI) Champions Award is the Director of the WISH programme. She said:
“What we do is work with the women to identify what tools, resources and support they need to succeed at the high-performance level – as a coach, but also as a leader.
“The WISH programme is very much about not fixing the woman but fixing the system. So, we talk to them about how we can dismantle these obstacles to create this more inclusive and equitable system.
“The coaches from WISH are not only making changes for themselves and their athletes, but they also inspire other women and girls in sport. They do this by starting to work with the cultures and the systems in their countries and their sports to demonstrate the value and the positive impact of gender equality.”
The sixth cohort of international participants arrives at Herts for their intensive residential week next month, concluding just before International Women’s Day (Sunday 8 March).
Learn more about the WISH programme at Herts, Sport at the University of Hertfordshire, and read more about the Milano-Cortina Olympic Games.
