Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 172

Here's an excerpt from an online interview I recently read of former Olympic rower Annie Vernon in the Guardian:

“In my first iteration of the book, gender was a whole chapter because it’s really interesting. In rowing, the men and women train alongside each other so you get to see from the outside how female and male crews do things differently.”  She suggests that, generally, “women derive confidence from good personal performances and the process; men derive confidence from winning and the outcome – men seemed only to need the coach to set the training programme and do a good job”.

“I asked every coach I interviewed: ‘Do you coach men and women differently?’ They’d say: ‘Duh, of course.’ Toni Minichiello [who coached Jessica Ennis-Hill] was quite vocal about women being so much easier to coach. He said they don’t make excuses.”Vernon adds: “Women need emotional support. Of course some men and women don’t fit that mould. But I heard a great interviewthat Danny Kerry [the GB women’s hockey coach] did. He coached the men before the women and he spoke about team-building. He said: ‘Men build their team around a task. What do we do? How do we do it? Women build their task around the team. They need a really strong bond first and then they’ll say: What is the task? How will we do it? It’s more of a connection. They want to get to know each other first – before becoming the best in the world.’"