“But if you look at it from the other perspective, sport has not been able itself to keep politics out of sport and it’s increasingly being pulled into huge societal challenges. I spent three or four years working at Sport England as a director, and we spent a lot of our time working with individual sports on massive issues like transgender inclusion, racism, child safeguarding… these huge societal issues smashing into sport and sport having to deal with those.
“So it’s not just about athletes taking a proactive step to stand for something. It’s also about sport now being a microcosm of society and politics and not having any choice in that. They do mix and they have to mix because politics and sport are such big arenas for all of us.”
Those points are echoed by Evans, a Worcester prop who set up the women’s rugby clothing brand Ruggette RFC. “Even if there were a want to separate politics from sport, it’s simply not possible,” said Evans. “Nothing that we do in this world can be separated from the fact that we live in a system together and we’re constantly re-evaluating that system. There is no such thing as a neutral when it comes to using your voice in sport or in politics or in the world we live in. If you choose to not use it, that’s your choice – but that’s the same as saying something.”
Of course, there is a risk in athletes speaking out – it could affect their place on a team, impact their commercial deals or lead to a backlash on social media for example. Still, Dearing, the first black female swimmer to represent Great Britain at the Olympics, has spoken about experiencing racism and co-founded the Black Swimming Association to help increase diversity in her sport.
“I didn’t want to look back on swimming and not see anything changed from when I started out,” said Dearing. “I do have a voice – it’s not a huge voice, especially in swimming and being an open water swimmer – but I thought if I can help influence the sport and change it in any way, then I’d have done something.
“All I’m saying is that everybody should know how to swim. I can’t fathom how you can say that is troublemaking or anything like that.”
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