The rocker and the heroine: gendered media representations of equestrian sports at the 2012 Olympics

Introduction Media play an important role when it comes to gender constructions in sports. According to sociologist Pirkko Markula (Bruce, Hovden, and Markula 2010), ‘media preserve, transmit and create important cultural information, they powerfully shape how and what we know about sport in general and women’s sport in particular’ (2). Using this conclusion as a starting point, the purpose of this article is to analyse mediated gender relations in equestrian sports in two Swedish morning papers during the 2012 Olympic Games.