For the Olympic Games, the German gymnasts exchanged their leotards for a wetsuit. A strong message, at a time when the athletes’ outfits are still the subject of much debate.
The leotard remained in the locker room. This Sunday, July 25 in Tokyo, for the second day of competition at the Olympic Games, the gymnasts of the German team participated in the qualifications and chose not to wear this traditional outfit of this discipline. Instead, Elisabeth Seitz, Sarah Voss, Pauline Schaefer-Betz and Kim Bui wore a red and white jumpsuit hiding their arms and legs.
Behind this sartorial choice, it was not fashion but feminism. “We want to show that every woman has the right to choose what she wants to wear”Elisabeth Seitz told Reuters before the start of the competition. A timely decision, as swim caps designed especially for Afro hair are banned and the beach-handballeusenovégiennes have been fined for wearing shorts and not a bikini.
The suit became a symbol for the German gymnasts, who already wore it in April 2021 for the European Championships which took place in Basel. With this outfit, authorized by the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG), the idea is “to feel good and to stay elegant”, explained Sarah Voss on Instagram. The 21-year-old athlete told ZDF: “Little girl, I didn’t see the tight fit as a problem.” But, growing up, she the leotard, sometimes very indented, began to no longer correspond to him. “When puberty started, when I got my period, I started to feel less and less comfortable”, she added.
Her colleague Elisabeth Seitz, for her part, evoked the many photographs of young gymnastic girls which circulated on the Internet and which were unfortunately watched not only by fans of this discipline. As AFP recalls, she explained that swapping the leotard for the combination was “an important signal”.