Backhanded insults follow women into sporting arena

Once again our obsession with body image has overshadowed achievement when it comes to women in sport. We should champion those of all shapes and sizes who go out and compete, writes Clodagh Finn

Those recent pictures of former Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli made me want to weep. Not because the Twitter trolls are giving the 2013 champ a hard time for losing so much weight – we’ve come to expect that kind of dribbling nonsense from social media.

What is utterly dispiriting in the first week of one of the world’s oldest tennis championships is that, yet again, body image has usurped women’s sporting and other achievements.