Everyone Watches Women's Sports
Monday was the Boston Marathon. Hellen Obiri defended her title, winning the race for the second year in a row. She outsprinted fellow Kenyan Sharon Lokedi down the final stretch, winning in 2:27:37. Edna Kiplagat – age 44!! – came in third. And shout-out to one of my favorite masters runners, 2018 Boston champion Des Linden who was the third American across the finish line. Men also ran.
Monday was also the WNBA draft, with women's sports once again smashing records: 2.4 million viewers turned in to watch the teams make their picks. First up, the Indiana Fever who – no surprise – went with Iowa star Caitlin Clark. Clark's salary – $338,000 over four years – drew outrage as last year's number one pick for the NBA secured a $55 million four-year contract. Yeah, it sucks. But to be clear, this isn't a Clark problem – this is a problem across the WNBA (why do you think Brittney Griner was in Russia, FFS?!), across all women's sports. Be mad about all of it, particularly for marginalized women – like, this story in The Wall Street Journal: Buzunesh Deba "Won the Boston Marathon 10 Years Ago. She’s Still Waiting for Her $100,000." Clark, for her part, is gonna be just fine. She appeared on Saturday Night Live, incidentally, and roasted Michael Che, who's been consistently awful about women's sports.
Elsewhere in sports: apparently someone cheated at trivia in DC and The Washington Post is all over the scandal. A federal judge has tossed a lawsuit defending a ban on trans women participating in sports in Nassau County, New York. Nike unveiled the uniforms it's designed for the US Olympics team, and many people were not happy with one of the options for women: a bodysuit with the cut so high on the hips that one athlete, long-jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall responded that her "hoo ha is going to be out." Russ Cook, also known as the "Hardest Geezer," successfully completed his run of the length of Africa. (The first person? There seems some debate about this.) It took Cook 352 days. "I'm pretty tired," he told reporters. Aren't we all, brother.
Research, "research," and other health takes: I wrote about walking in Monday's newsletter. "Where Are All the Women in Sports Science Research?" asks Christine Yu. "The Truth Behind the Slouching Epidemic" by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker. Also in The New Yorker, Dhruv Kullar examines Peter Attia's work on longevity: "How to Die in Good Health." According to researchers at the University of Colorado, pot might motivate you to work out. Yay! But it might make your workouts feel harder. Buuummmmmer.
Scenes from the health technology hustle: Apparently Lenny Kravitz posted a terrible workout video to Twitter. Thankfully, we're all getting our misinformation about health and wellness from TikTok these days, but the folks at The New York Times did their part to make sure we saw it – and to point out it was bad. Also deserving some serious side-eye with bad advice: Equinox gyms are adding "biomarker lab tests in personalized health play." No one learned a goddamn thing from Theranos, did they? Meanwhile, "BoydSense Raises $7.5M for Breathable Glucose Monitor," according to Athletech News. Speaking of data tracking, "In a first, a Colorado law extends privacy rights to the neural data increasingly coveted by technology companies," The New York Times reports. "Is 'spiritual' the new wellness?" asks Rina Raphael in her newsletter Well To Do. Isn't that the old wellness too? It's so hard to keep track... Melbourne's The Age reports that magic "Mushroom death mystery at wellness seminar triggers police probe." It certainly seems like wellness retreats are not good. Speaking of which...
A podcast recommendation: The Retreat, a four-part investigation by The Financial Times into the intensive meditation retreats run by the Goenka network.
A movie recommendation: I'm very late to this, but I finally subscribed to Netflix over the weekend, which means I finally watched Nyad. Annette Bening and Jodie Foster are just terrific. Bonus: you simply cannot watch this story and believe that fitness gadgetry or algorithms are ever going to be a better coach than a human who is invested in your success.
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