Dominique Kondo

4.35 a.m., the alarm goes off.

5am, a 50k training ride.

6.30am, a strength session, often fighting through muscle fatigue and sometimes even period cramps.

8am, breakfast with a nutrition plan calculated to the gram.

9am, off to work or university, because many female athletes juggle jobs or study with their sporting careers.

Now that's a fairly typical morning for many elite female athletes.

Strong, disciplined, driven and constantly measured.

Isn't the female body extraordinary?

It adapts, it endures, it creates life, it recovers from injury, responds to training and achieves feats of skill, strength and power once thought impossible.

And yet, in 2025, women are still judged more for how they look than for what they can do.

Judged more for how they look than for what they can do.

At the top of their game, up to 70% of elite female athletes report body image concerns.

You heard me, up to 70%.

Now, this is women with Olympic medals, premiership trophies, world records, and still they feel the pressure to look a certain way, which is often at direct opposition with how they need to build their bodies for competitive success.

Now, this topic is such a passion of mine because I live and work in this space every day.

I am surrounded by some of the most intelligent, hardworking, resilient women in sport.

Women who can outrun, outlive and outthink most people in the room and yet they battle a world that comments on their appearance before their capability.

How is this fair, I ask you?

At the top of her game at world number one, Ash Barty walked away, choosing to define success on her own terms.

Elite Olympic gymnast Simone Biles reminded the world that mental and physical wellbeing are performance foundations, not weaknesses.