SALLY JONES: Why Wimbledon’s painting is a symptom of a sport going backwards for women

At first glance, Wimbledon’s painting of past winners, created to promote the world’s most prestigious tennis championship, looks polished and glossy.

Big names – tick. Multiple Wimbledon title holders and legends of the game – tick. But after scanning it for a while, my jaw dropped.

Aside from the blatant omission of Britain’s greatest tennis star of the modern era, Andy Murray – who, surprisingly, immediately provoked a storm of fury from his legions of fans – where were the women?

In the forefront were the guys who are clearly regarded as the present and future of the world game – US Open champion and Spanish prodigy Carlos Alcaraz, and Italian Jannik Sinner, who has yet to trouble the scorers after the quarterfinals of a major championship .

Meanwhile, three of the four great champions who have dominated the men’s game for the past decade or more, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, are booing together on the stairs.

But who are those shadowy figures in the background?

Oh yeah. Virtually unrecognizable behind the male superstars is primarily the couple who lit up the women’s game in the 1970s and 1980s with their super-competitive fights – the iconic Martina Navratilova, who ushered in a new era of power and physical domination, and her great rival, the ultra-strategic ‘Ice Maiden’ Chris Evert.

Now look a little harder. Further up the stairs, showing none of their real brutality and physicality are a generic pair of white-clad players.

No, it’s not some good little girls in a crocodile on their way to school, it’s Serena Williams, arguably the greatest player of all time, and her wildly successful older sister Venus.

At their peak, as nearly invincible singles and doubles players, these two brought a whole new dimension of explosive hitting and athleticism to the game.

They also showed a generation of little girls that you could be both strong and feminine – and whatever your race, background, and flaws, if you believed strongly enough in your dream, you could prevail.

And then, at the top of the stairs, who are those young people who have been pushed into the corner? Well, they might just be world number one Iga Swiatek and reigning Wimbledon Women’s Champion Elena Rybakina – though even their closest friends and family could hardly identify them from this sketchy portrayal of two of the game’s top players, whose rivalry seems to carry on into the next decade.

Besides, no place at all for Billie-Jean King who with her gallant band of pioneers busied, promoted and competed both for her own galaxy of major titles and recognition for the entire women’s game, essentially kickstarting it as a compelling professional spectacle and creating the lucrative edifice that today makes multimillionaires out of young women who have won only one big crown.

What a depressing picture this is. Even today, this is quite literally how women’s achievements are written out of history.

By relegating them to the background, cornering them and blurring them, even the most brilliant people are forgotten and overlooked, while the men are in the spotlight.

But maybe it’s not that surprising. Women’s tennis has been hit by a number of controversies lately that together seem to indicate a sport that is about to move backwards rather than forward.

For example, it was Swiatek who was recently outraged by the Madrid Open’s decision to deny her and her fellow doubles finalists the usual chance to speak after the trophy presentation, although the men’s doubles finalists were unquestioned. Allowed.

The reason for Swiatek’s ‘silence’? ? That she had rightly complained about the shrewd organization of the tournament, with crucial matches – many of them women’s – scheduled in the early hours, while the big men’s matches were mainly held on top show courts at peak times.

Entrusting women’s matches to the equivalent of the “bean docks” is a phenomenon still rife in the professional game.

That she had rightly complained about the shrewd organization of the tournament, with crucial women’s matches scheduled for the early hours, while the men’s matches were mainly held on the top show courts at peak times.

Entrusting women’s matches to the equivalent of the “bean docks” is a phenomenon still rife in the professional game.

The Madrid Open was also heavily criticized for its decision to replace ball kids with skimpy-clad female models who look more like boxing’s infamous “ring girls” than any ball girls or boys I’ve ever encountered.

There was even a clear gender contrast in the celebration of top players’ birthdays.

Thousands of fans of the women’s game went crazy when Carlos Alcaraz, number 2 in the Spanish men’s world, was presented with a giant cake on his birthday after a match on center court, while Aryna Sablenka, number 2 in the women’s world, was presented with a small cake that looked looked more. like a cake in comparison.

These may seem like impossible little complaints. After all, do players really care how they’re portrayed in a painting that, given Murray’s absence, seems destined for a dark, unloved hallway somewhere in SW19.

And is the size of a birthday cake or a few crafty girls taking over the prom maid job for a day or two really that big of a deal?

Unfortunately, yes it is. Because all these seemingly minor incidents reflect a much larger power imbalance that has been visible since the beginning of the game and still seems to persist no matter how hard we push it.

As a former tournament player and the BBC’s first female TV sports presenter in the 1980s, with a long career as a tennis journalist and Five Live Wimbledon commentator, I’ve seen a lot of discrimination over the years and fought for greater recognition of women , both as sportswomen and as writers and pundits.

A typical example was when I played in Ireland with a team from British universities against the Irish national team. My doubles partner was a former junior national champion, but she and I were shunted to side court for our women’s matches at a prestigious club in Dublin.

Meanwhile, our male counterparts, while decent players and useful journeymen, lacked any national crown to their name, still took Ireland’s pride on the fine arena-style show court in front of a sizeable crowd of spectators.

We laughed about it at the time, but the bottom line was that the women’s game was so poorly appreciated.

Media coverage of the women’s game was also often deplorable. I well remember the year glamorous American Ann White showed up at Wimbledon in a slinky white catsuit and captured acres of riveting coverage, while Martina Navratilova was initially unable to find a clothing sponsor around the same time, despite being well on her way to No. become the world.

Of course, things have moved on now. The top female tennis stars and our homegrown talent, such as Emma Raducanu, Katie Boulter and Harriet Dart, are now widely recognized for their impressive play, rather than their looks. In general, there is more respect for the women’s game.

But now that so many bastions have been toppled – especially in the media, with countless women presenting all kinds of male and female sports with great professionalism – I had hoped that something as ridiculous and discriminatory as the misplaced Wimbledon painting, with its stupid reverence for the male game and a single nod in the direction of the women’s game would be a thing of the past.

And especially in the week when the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) Tour celebrates its 50th anniversary of its founding.

So while the old stars of the women’s game are rightly honored by the Tour itself and the All England Club, I believe it’s time not to get angry, but to take revenge.

Commission a second painting, but this time with the women in the center. Show us Serena and Venus in all their defiant and explosive glory.

Show us Steffi Graf, the trailblazing Billie-Jean, Australian superstar Margaret Court and Althea Gibson, the first black champion to break the color bar and open the game to thousands of aspiring kids from difficult backgrounds like hers, including the Williams sisters . It’s time they found their rightful place at Wimbledon, the iconic heart of both men [i]And[i] the women’s game.