Can the press on both sides of the political spectrum please stop referring to Mollie Tibbets as a jogger and start calling her what she actually was- a runner?
She competed in cross-country and quite likely track. She trained regularly, had goals, tracked her progress. She was a runner.
What happened to her is horrible and fucked up. Women athletes should never have to worry about that kind of thing or get victim-blamed over being attacked while training for their sport. And yes, she was an actual competitive athlete.
It’s upsetting, considering most competitive runners don’t like the J-word because it implies “slow” and “not serious” in the lingo of the XC/track/road racing world, to see a word with negative connotations to competitive runners used.
Stop using language that implies “slow” or “not serious” or “not an actual athlete on an actual sports team”
Director and screenwriter Gina Prince-Bythewood workshopped her award winning film Love & Basketballat the 1998 Directors Lab and premiered it two years later at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival.