It should have been a show of British sporting dominance when Dina Asher-Smith and Daryll Neita made it to the 100metre final of the European Championships in August. Then, unexpectedly, Asher-Smith pulled up and Neita was not quick enough for the gold, both because of cramps. Later, Asher-Smith revealed hers to be a symptom of her period and shared her frustration at its impact on her sport. If it were a men's issue, she argued, it would have been fixed by now.
It is a feeling shared by many fellow athletes and coaches, including Chelsea FC's manager, Emma Hayes. "Once a month for potentially up to around five days, many female players have an event that can cause significant distress and impact heavily on their performance," she wrote in the Telegraph earlier this year. "Athletes deserve a greater understanding of the array of symptoms that can crop up."
That demand is increasingly being heard. Sports science companies have begun offering consultancy packages to help athletes "work proactively" with their cycles to stay on top, and their approach has found disciples: the coach of the US women's football team partly attributes their 2019 World Cup win to it. Sports institutes in several European countries have also started projects to equip their athletes with similar strategies ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
But what can anyone offer athletes struggling with their periods? Some researchers believe that understanding the menstrual cycle will not just free athletes from symptoms, but take them to new, record-breaking heights.
For an athlete with bad period symptoms, the menstrual cycle's fluctuating hormones and monthly bleeding are not just a fleeting annoyance. As the Chinese swimmer Fu Yuanhui found at the 2016 Rio Olympics when she failed to make the podium because of period fatigue, it can be the difference between winning a medal and going home empty-handed.
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