Meet the 52 women breaking down coaching barriers at Paris Olympics
Take a look inside the coaching WhatsApp group behind Simone Biles, Tom Daley and Sha’Carri Richardson
In January 52 phone numbers were added to a new WhatsApp group. It was called “Preparation for Paris” but may as well have been dubbed the Golden Group, assuming things go to plan this summer. Those phone numbers belonged to 52 leading coaches aiming for Paris 2024, hailing from 15 different countries and 19 sports. All of them are women.
It includes the two-times Olympic champion New Zealand shot-putter Valerie Adams, now a coach and chair of the World Athletics Athletes’ Commission. Simone Biles’s former coach Aimee Boorman is also there. So too is the Olympian Sara Symington, now head of Olympic and Paralympic programmes for British Cycling. The former American sprinter Mechelle Lewis Freeman is also involved, as coach for the USA women’s relay team, managing stars including Sha’Carri Richardson. Another is Jane Figueiredo, the longtime coach to British diver Tom Daley, set to compete at his fifth and final Olympics.