Michele Kang pledges US$50m to ‘unlock’ female athletic potential

The American businesswoman Michele Kang has announced a US$50m contribution to boost women’s sports.

Kang, owner of the Washington Spirit, Olympique Lyonnais Féminin and the London City Lionesses Football Club, has launched a non-profit organisation to help “unlock” female athletic potential.

Unveiled at a Paris event on Saturday, the Kynisca Innovation Hub (KIH) aims to “revolutionise” training methods for female athletes through education and innovation. The project aims to raise US$100m to support its mission.

Kang will contribute US$50m in combined seed funding and matching funds to support KIH.

“We have only begun to unlock the potential of female athletes,” she said. “We will understand women’s physiology and biology and train athletes according to supporting data.

“Kynisca Innovation Hub will become a pioneer of female performance research – so we can stop training women as if they are simply small men – and unlock their true potential.”

Even as investment in women’s sports grows, little to no resources have been dedicated to how female athletes are trained. Currently, only six per cent of sports science data is focused exclusively on females.

Through KIH, a team of scientists, academics, and engineers aims to prioritise developing and sharing “evidence-based” training methods and education for coaches and practitioners.

Led by Dawn Scott and Theresa McDonnell, the team seeks to create the world’s largest database to answer essential questions about female health, wellness and performance.

“Having worked as a practitioner in elite women’s sport for over 20 years, this is the first time I have received support of this scale, both in terms of level of investment and, most importantly, understanding the need to focus on training females as females,” said Scott, KIH executive director.

“I am honoured to be part of Michele’s vision and excited to be working with our world-leading experts to develop the global blueprint for female athlete support.”

McDonnell, KIH chief executive officer, added: “Michele’s unprecedented commitment to advancing women’s sports is providing the long-needed resources to close the six per cent gap and finally develop training methods to optimise female athletic performance.

“The Innovation Hub results will have a massive global impact on all sports and all levels of play.”

The KIH suite of solutions will feature four tools, including an app, a coach platform, a data analysis platform and a website. Insights from academic research and data analytics centres are hoped to help inform new training protocols for female athletes.