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A camera can show the speed of a runner’s final steps, the force behind a jump or the emotion that follows a personal best. It can also linger on a female athlete’s body in a way that adds nothing of substance to the audience’s understanding of her performance.
New guidance from the European Broadcasting Union and European Athletics is asking sports broadcasters to recognize the difference.
Raising the Bar: Guidelines for Respectful Media Coverage in Women’s Athletics was developed in response to athletes’ concerns about how they are filmed during competition. It draws on real broadcast examples and the experiences of Olympic track & field athletes to show how camera choices can either highlight athletic skill or leave competitors feeling exposed.
The free resource is designed for anyone involved in filming or selecting footage from women’s athletics. It uses still images from actual broadcasts to compare intrusive, sexualized or distracting shots with alternatives that better capture technique, movement and emotion. It covers common moments across the sport, from athletes preparing in the starting blocks and recovering after a race to approaches, takeoffs and landings in the jumping events.
The guidance is not calling for fewer close-ups, replays or creative shots. Instead, it asks a simple guiding question: does the image you’re capturing help viewers understand the sport?
Keeping the performance in view
In track and field events, camera positions near runways, landing areas and starting lines can capture crucial detail — but they can also create intrusive images when framing lingers too long, drops to low angles, or follows athletes in moments of recovery or adjustment of uniforms.
The guidelines promote respect, advising against prolonged focus on isolated body parts, low angles from behind or beneath athletes and slow-motion replays that do not add insight to the action.
They also point to ways that better serve the sport. Wider shots in the pole vault can show the full sequence of approach, takeoff and clearance. Side-on views in the long jump reveal speed, rhythm and landing technique. Aerial angles and well-chosen replays can help explain how a performance is built, not just how it ends.
Listening to the athletes in front of the camera
For athletes, these choices can shape their experience of competition as much as their on-screen visibility.
British Olympic pole vaulter Holly Bradshaw, who contributed to the guidelines, described athletes becoming “more focused on the cameras instead of their own performance.” She has also received social media abuse after slow-motion footage of herself and fellow competitors circulated online.
That concern is not an argument against close or creative coverage. It is a call to broadcasters to use their tools with greater purpose.
“Our sport offers numerous opportunities to showcase technique and the beauty of movement,” said another contributor, Serbian Olympic long jumper Ivana Španović, pointing to slow-motion footage of takeoff and stride, aerial views and explanatory graphics as ways to help audiences understand a performance.
More than how much coverage women receive
The debate around women’s sport has often focused on the lack of coverage it receives compared to men’s. That fight for more airtime makes the time women do have on screen to showcase their skills and educate audiences about their sport even more precious.
Shot selection, replay length and camera focus can all influence how performance is interpreted. A close-up can capture emotion and intensity, but it can also shift attention away from athletic execution.
These decisions are often made in seconds, but their cumulative effect is significant. They shape whether viewers understand a performance or just observe it.
In athletics, every movement tells a story—one of strength, precision, and years of dedication. When we step onto the runway, track, or field, we showcase the very best of our sport: a fusion of power, technique, and passion and the only thing we want is to execute our best jumps.
– Ivana Španović
From broad principles to practical choices
Raising the Bar builds on earlier efforts to make changes to coverage, including International Olympic Committee guidance on language, imagery and interviews, and Olympic Broadcasting Services briefings ahead of Paris 2024 on consistent coverage of men’s and women’s sport.
Its value lies in its specificity. Rather than stopping at general principles, it shows how respectful coverage applies in practice across events such as the high jump, pole vault, long jump and track races — and how certain shots clarify performance while others distract from it.
As a voluntary framework, its impact will depend on how broadcasters use it: in pre-event planning, in conversations with production teams, and in real-time editorial decisions.
It also offers a reference point for other sports where similar questions arise, from gymnastics to swimming to beach volleyball, where framing choices can either support or undermine the athlete’s performance.
Strong sports coverage does more than record what happened. It helps audiences understand how it happened — highlighting the timing, strength and precision behind it.
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