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For a long time in endurance sports, women and girls have not been allowed to compete at the same distances as men. They have run or cycled shorter courses, but that is changing as female athletes, including high school girls in Utah, lobby for equality. Ciara Hulet from KUER reports.
CIARA HULET, BYLINE: Sixteen-year-old May Miller zooms by with her friends on a blue mountain bike she named Cinderella Sparkle Princess.
(SOUNDBITE OF BICYCLE PASSING)
HULET: It has a sticker by the handlebars that says, shut up legs.
MAY MILLER: Because when you're racing and you look down, and your legs hurt, then you just see that, and you're like, OK, they don't hurt anymore. Pain is just a mindset.
HULET: Now she wants to push her legs even harder. The league that high school mountain bikers race in Utah often has varsity girls racing three laps and boys four. Miller started a petition to change that and equalize distances. When she posted it on a social fitness app, she got flamed in the comments.
MAY: Boys, they would be like, well, you shouldn't because then you'll get hurt, or you won't have a social life anymore. And I'm like, what? What? If we want to work that hard, we will work that hard.
HULET: What stands in her way is the policy of NICA, the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, which sanctions races in Utah and 30 other states. Association President Amanda Carey, a former professional mountain bike racer, says it's largely about safety.
AMANDA CAREY: We don't want riders passing, and it's a rule of ours to prevent that from happening on course at those speeds.
HULET: To prevent passing, the association looks at past events and figures out how many laps most racers can finish in 90 minutes. Varsity boys, usually faster, can often do four laps in Utah compared to three for most girls. So NICA sets fewer laps for girls, so not as many riders have to be pulled off the course if they're not on track to finish in 90 minutes.
CAREY: It's not only not a good feeling. It doesn't really meet any of our goals as a youth development organization for folks to have that positive sporting experience.
HULET: But May Miller with the Cinderella Sparkle Princess bike pushed back with data.
MAY: They talk a lot about equity, but really, they're kind of going against what they say 'cause they're showing that we can't do the same as boys.
HULET: Amanda Carey.
CAREY: Her leadership, it forced us - and we did - to really go through the current courses we have.
HULET: NICA went through recent race results with more scrutiny and found one Utah course that meets their criteria to equalize laps. Carey says varsity girls will now race the same number of laps as boys on that course and maybe on more in the future.
CAREY: May helped us see this, is that we have to continuously really look at that data from a - how could we change this? - versus we are doing it right.
HULET: NICA will continuously look because lots more girls are getting into mountain bike racing and finishing times are getting faster. Girls varsity lap times on that Utah course are 26% faster in the last decade, and the number of girls participating in the Utah league is up 32%.
CAREY: I think that participation is absolutely having an impact - right? - 'cause the more girls that come, the more they get practice. They get exposure, right? They get more competitive fields.
HULET: May Miller is happy things are starting to change, but she still hopes for more meaningful changes down the road. Until then, Miller and her friends are going to keep biking with everything they've got.
IVY WOLLENZIEN, CLAIRE BROWN AND MAY MILLER: (Chanting) G-R-I-T, GRiT, we don't take no shh (ph) - shortcuts.
HULET: For NPR News, I'm Ciara Hulet in Spanish Fork, Utah.
(SOUNDBITE OF POST MALONE SONG, "SOCIALITE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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