Written by Rachel Williams, Policy and Public Affairs Manager at Women in Sport.
2025, eh? What a year.
Celebrity Traitors, the baffling rise of Labubus, Katy Perry in space for some reason and ohmygod so much sport. So much.
And whilst I understand some men’s sport did in fact happen, let’s be honest, it was the women’s game that produced most of the memorable moments, the stuff we’re all still thinking about as the year comes to an end. (Also, this is a Women in Sport blog, what do you want from me?)
If I were to give 2025 a theme, and apparently that’s what I’m about to do, it would be The Year Women’s Team Sport Came of Age. Since I joined WiS three years ago, many of the conversations about women’s team sport I’ve had would go like this: “Oh I love watching the Lionesses [long silence]”.
In 2025, absolutely not. People wanted to talk about the Lionesses winning their second Euros, obviously, but they also wanted to talk about the Red Roses winning a home World Cup. The Indian women’s cricket team doing the same. The incredible success of the Canadian rugby team (and here’s hoping they finally start to get the respect and support they deserve at home).
And of course, what I’m sure we can all agree is the greatest sporting moment of the year: Jess Fishlock scoring her first international tournament goal at Wales’ first international football tournament. No prizes for guessing which home nation I’m from.
That’s not to say there weren’t some amazing individual sporting moments too. Pauline Ferrand Prevot becoming the first ever French woman to win the Tour de France Femmes. Morgan Lake clearing 2m in the high jump, the first time a British woman has done that.
Balvinder Sopal showing as much resilience as any professional sports star to survive a record five dance offs and show women everywhere how much joy dancing can bring (yes, I’m making the case for Strictly Come Dancing as sport, fight me).
Faith Kipyegon getting painfully close to being the first woman to break the four-minute mile barrier – and, by the way, her brilliant, predominantly male, team of pacers for showing what allyship in sport truly looks like. Honestly, Google the videos of the last 100m; I defy you not to well up.
And yet.
Let’s not pretend that 2025 was all sunshine and rainbows for women’s sport.
2025 was also the year that the Lionesses, as the Three Lions have before them, had to defend their Black players against hideous racism from alleged fans. As our biggest piece of research for the year – Black Girls and Sport: A Breakup Story – showed, sport is still not a place that Black girls and women feel that they belong. We shouldn’t accept any of this. We mustn’t accept any of this.
It was the year, or perhaps more accurately yet another year, where vicious scrutiny of women’s bodies sometimes got louder than the commentary on the amazing things they achieved. And of course we can’t win. Either we’re too big and bulky (ask literally any rugby player, weightlifter, rower, or indeed woman who has even picked up a weight) or too small and girly (ask Pauline Ferrand Prevot, who didn’t even have time to put the Tour de France’s iconic yellow winner’s jersey on before the criticism of her body started, or Wales second row Georgia Evans, abused for *checks notes* wearing ribbons in her hair).
None of this is new, none of it is surprising – certainly not in a world where the literal President of the United States thinks referring to women as ‘piggy’ is totally fine and cool – but goodness me it’s exhausting. And, of course, absolutely unacceptable.
It was the year in which female tennis stars shone a light on the abuse that sportswomen face, online and offline, every day. Katie Boulter let the media into her mentions to expose the horrible online abuse she’s subject to every time she, or her partner, step onto the court. Emma Raducanu was literally stalked whilst playing a match. We should applaud their bravery for speaking out and prioritising their safety whilst being absolutely bloody furious that they have to.
And it feels trivial in this context but it would be remiss of me not to say a brief word on Halo, Sky Sports’ ill-advised attempt to be down with the girlies and hot girl walk their way into the matcha foam of the women’s sport fan market? (That is the worst sentence I’ve ever written, I’m so sorry.) I’m not sure I can say anything that funnier people haven’t already said, so I’ll just say this: if you wouldn’t say it to a male audience, don’t say it to a female audience. Truly, it is that simple.
And Gianni Infantino continues to be in charge of world football (and making up fake prizes for his questionable friends, like most of us stop doing in primary school), something we should just be continually sad about. I know it’s the men’s World Cup he’s busy ruining this year, but our time will come.
Now look, we mustn’t let the bad stuff take away from the good stuff. When I think about sport in 2025, I’ll remember Jess Fishlock’s goal as something glorious that brought me a frankly disproportionate amount of joy at the same time as remembering the revulsion I felt at the hate Jess Carter was facing. Two things can be true at once. But we do have to remember the bad stuff, I’m afraid. Otherwise, how on earth will we ever change it?
And that’s what we, collectively, as both sports fans and, like, decent human beings, must make 2026 about: keeping up the fight to say ‘no, enough, this isn’t ok’. Women and girls belong in sport. If you’ve got this far in this blog, I know you know that. But it still needs us to work to make sure everyone else catches up.
There’s so much amazing sport to look forward to in 2026. I, for one, aspire to spend as much of the year as humanly possible watching England’s women winning in noteworthy ways in the cricket. Beating India in the first ever women’s Test match at Lords, perhaps? Lifting a home T20 World Cup?
And wouldn’t it be glorious if, when I sharpen my quill to write this blog in a year’s time, that stuff like this, sport not sexism, is all I have to write about.
It’s unlikely but hey, a girl can dream.
