By Sally Jackson, The Australian
AUSTRALIA is a famously sports-loving nation, but usually only when the sports are played by men.
Sometimes it seems a woman practically has to win Olympic gold to garner about the same amount of attention a male AFL player can effortlessly achieve with an adverse reaction to a sleeping tablet.
Attempting to somewhat redress the imbalance is new bi-monthly magazine Move Sports Australia, which launched in Brisbane last week.
Founder and editor Rosanne Bayes, a high school English teacher and sports lover with no background in commercial publishing, had the idea for the magazine when she flew to watch her daughter compete at a track and field meet in April last year.
"I went to buy a magazine for the trip and could find nothing that appealed," she says. "So I paid $11.95 for an 80-page UK running mag and I thought, 'Wouldn't it be good if we could have something Australian-based that did this sort of thing, but about lots of different sports?'."
By the time the plane touched down, Bayes had the title, first covergirl and enough story ideas for a year's worth of issues.
In May, almost a year after that plane flight, federal Sports Minister Kate Ellis released the Towards a Level Playing Field report, which revealed that in 2008 horse racing received more air time on Australian TV than all women's sport combined.
It estimated coverage of women in sport accounted for 9 per cent of all sports coverage in TV news and current affairs and just 7 per cent of non-news sports programming. That month the federal budget for the first time included funding dedicated to lifting coverage of women's sport.
"The timing is obviously right," says Bayes. "If I can do even a small part to help with that then I'm really happy to do what I can. I believe the Australian public is ready to embrace this kind of publication."
Move, which has a target audience of females aged 16-39, will be distributed nationally with a cover price of $7.95. Its initial print run is 16,000 copies.
The first issue features Olympic swimmer Stephanie Rice on the cover and includes columns by a physiotherapist, a doctor and a sports psychologist, healthy recipes, sporty fashion and even sports-related horoscopes.
Bayes says Move's focus on sport differentiates it from the women's health and fitness titles.
"A lot of Australian women love sport," she says. "The main purpose is to promote Australian women in sport and give our women the credit and recognition they deserve.
"We need to get out of that mould of thinking the misdemeanours of certain male members of the sporting population are more newsworthy than female achievements in sport."
Guests at tomorrow's launch will include Rice, gymnast Danielle Prince and members of the Matildas soccer team and the Queensland Firebirds netball squad.
Bayes has a background in athletics, netball and tennis and is a regular runner. Her husband, Mark, retired as a Sydney Swans AFL player in 1998.
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