In February 1976, oarswoman Anne Warner, a 1975 world championship silver medallist in the US women’s eight, caught pneumonia. Soon after, on the morning of 3 March, Warner and eighteen others from Yale women’s rowing team assembled themselves before the school’s director of women’s athletics, and proceeded to remove their tops in protest. Written across their chests and backs as they stood, half naked, was ‘Title IX’ (a reference to federal legislation that had been passed in 1972 which mandated athletic equality regardless of gender).
Their captain read from a statement: ‘On a day like today, the rain freezes on our skin. Then we sit for half an hour as the ice melts into our sweats to meet the sweat that has soaked our clothes underneath … half a dozen of us are sick now, and in two days’ time we will begin training twice every day….’.