Women In Canoe Sport - Inclusion and Empowerment of Women in Canoe Sport Disciplines

Canoe sport disciplines are very male-oriented. This is a greatly disadvantageous handicap for many women. In our particular sport, young female athletes not only have to face the common and female-specific health problems of anorexia, bulimia, other eating disorders or anaemia; canoe slalom training can also cause serious problems such as back-pain, back injuries and shoulder injuries. All of these not only negatively impact the careers of female athletes; unfortunately, these are often life-long issues. Moreover, we see that a male-oriented training approach is very often overwhelming and exhausting, and leads to dangerous overtraining, loss of motivation and early career terminations. We see that women, and especially young women, share the motivation, determination, focus and enthusiasm of their male colleagues; they want to be equally respected plus they have the same desire to win and prove everyone they are capable of reaching the top. However, at the same time, they are unique in their own way; one could call them more vulnerable. No matter the terminology, it is absolutely clear that young female athletes need a different, specific approach to training. A complex female canoe slalom training methodology should be developed which will take into account the needs of young female athletes; it should be specific, tailored and most importantly sustainable in the long-term. Therefore, our main objectives are: 1. To include and integrate more girls and women (competitors, coaches, trainers, volunteers) into the canoe sport environment; 2) To ensure a widely available, detailed and accurate education of canoe slalom coaches in the field of effective and sustainable young female athletes training methodology; 3) To show a good practice. To meet this goal, we will 1) Organize recruitment events for women; 2) prepare an e-learning website (Canoe Women Training and Racing Methodology); 3) train young coaches (women) how to work with girls and women in practice.