Big Boobs v. Small Boobs in Triathlon

I was reading through the Lava Magazine that I just received last week, and was looking at all the top pro competitors, both male and female, but I couldn’t help but notice that all of the women in the pro field had small chests.  Now, a lot of times girls with small chests feel self conscious or they bond together and make fun of themselves, or they wish they had bigger chests, yada yada yada, but honestly, I would be in the minority.  You know a lot of girls might brag about having big chests, and this is not one of those times.  In fact, my boobs have always gotten in the way!

When I was a gymnast, you were not supposed to have big boobs.  I remember because I started to get a butt and boobs, my gymnastics coach, started to call me fat, and tell me I needed to lose weight, I was 14.  Well I pretty much quit gymnastics the next day, and I was crying for weeks.  I couldn’t believe it.  I never really told my mom about it because I didn’t want to cause a huge spectacle at the gym, and have my mom yell at the coach, so I kind of just moved on and made up some lame excuse why I wanted to focus on soccer.  Although, I did want to focus on soccer because it was more social and less demanding of my time.  There were no 3 or 4 hours practices, and when we went away on tournaments it was all about the team and hanging out.  I loved it.  Now, with soccer I didn’t have as big of a problem, but I will never forget again at about the age of 16 one of my coaches saying “you are getting a little top heavy.”  I mean seriously?  Who says that to a 16 year old, by the way both of these coaches in gymnastics and soccer were men.  Well, I again cried but I didn’t quit because I loved my team, and I told my friends on the team and they were there to support me.  There was nothing I could do about having boobs, that’s what happens when you go from a girl to a woman.  I ended up playing college soccer, and as the years went on there were plenty of really talented girls with boobs, although some of us ended up wearing two sports bras, haha, so there would be less bouncing!

Anyway, it got me to thinking are flat chested girls better triathletes than bigger chested girls?  Why are there no big chested pro triathletes?  Yes, it could have a bit to do with body fat, and if I lost a little bit of body fat I might have smaller boobs, but I still would not lose my boobs, believe me even at my skinniest, I had boobs.

Oh yea, one thing, I’m so glad none of these things led to an eating disorder, those coaches were lucky that I had a good support network and that I was strong enough, because those types of comments can destroy people, especially when you are a teenager and no one is comfortable in their own skin.

So, I looked at the list of pro triathletes competing in Kona, there are 53 competing this year, and I’m not kidding I googled each one of them and looked at their images, and I could only find 1, she maybe was a size B or C, the rest A’s for sure.  1 out of 53, then I started to look through the ITU rankings, and again I couldn’t find anybody with big boobs.  So, is this just a current trend?  I can’t help but hope that there are other big boobed girls like me, who make it to pro and we start our own trend, because I want to prove that in a sport where it is uncommon, that it doesn’t prevent someone from being a great triathlete!  Just like it shouldn’t in gymnastics or soccer, or any other sport for that matter!

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