ABSTRACT
Anybody looking at media coverage of professional sport would be forgiven for thinking that it is an almost exclusively masculine pursuit. Men‘s sport dominates both TV schedules and news coverage, and with very few exceptions, women’s sports play second fiddle to the men in terms of airtime and column inches, prize winnings and spectator numbers. But a closer look at the institution of sport makes it clear that it‘s not only women who are excluded; in fact, sport is a site in which a variety of identities are stereotyped and side-lined and one in which a hierarchy of bodies is very much at work. Embodied notions of race, ethnicity and gender are very much in operation in sport – certain types of bodies are perceived as being particularly suited to some kinds of sports, and those who don’t fit the mould can find themselves excluded or even abused.
