Only in America!

Not strictly speaking a rugby story this one, but still something will be of interest and deserves wider circulation especially if you ever wondered why women's and girls' rugby struggles so much to get any proper newspaper or TV coverage.

At the recent BBC Sports Personality awards some viewers may have been disappointed (but probably not surprised) when an unbeaten twice-world champion women's sports team lost out on a major award to a men's team from the same sport who had recently managed to lose not just one game but an entire series, and moreover by a record score. Annoying though that was we are used to stupid behaviour like this from our sports journalists, to the extent that having a women's team nominated at all was a bit of a breakthrough.

However compared to America's sporting media it would appear that the BBC are a model of right-on feminist thinking, because in the US second place in their leading Sportswoman of the Year poll has just gone... to a horse.

Yes - its incredible but true that the combined knowledge of the USA's sporting journalists, when asked to come up with a list of that nation's top female sporting personalities for 2009 only managed to come up with one human (Serena Williams) before blank looks and mutual incomprehension forced to branch out into the animal kingdom and give the runners-up spot to a horse called Zenyatta (and if you want to read more or simply do not believe this two versions of the story are available, one from CBC and another from Women's Rights).

As they say (without a hint of irony) "Only In America" could the sporting exploits of half the population come second to a five year old animal that would not even know which way to run without a jockey on its back - though even then it demonstrably has more brain power than most US sporting journalists.