1. Yes, Title IX absolutely kickstarted the female athletics situation, and it’s allowed us to dominate for years. However, other countries are catching up, and that advantage is dwindling away decade by decade.

2. It’s important to note how sports are handled in other countries besides the US. In the states, either the sport needs to be run by a school the child is attending, then a college the child gets into. Those are severely limited to a couple individual sports, couple team sports and some track events…swimming if they’re lucky. From there, they’re pretty much locked into that specialty and it’s what they work towards. Football (not NFL), is HUGE in certain areas to the point where high school coaches are bringing in 6 figure salaries. And for those other sports, it turns into a pay-to-play model, in which the parents need to have to buy memberships into clubs, have a support system to help with travel and gear, and provide the child with everything else they need to keep going. It’s prohibitively expensive for a large majority of kids, so school sports is what they’re given and that’s it. In countries in Europe, there are government funded programs to allow kids the ability to perform in sports, but another accepted method is being sponsored by a professional club team and developed through their academy program. It allows more opportunity for kids who are just playing on the streets to be given a chance to show their talents.

I like the idea of demonstration sports. I honestly can’t fathom why France didn’t try to push for Parkour running as a sport though.