Motor Racing: Alice Powell calls for more advice for female competitors

Motor racing driver Alice Powell would like to see more information and advice provided to female competitors in her sport on how to manage periods.

Powell, who turned 22 on Monday, was reflecting on comments made by Britain’s leading female tennis player Heather Watson following her first-round elimination from the Australian Open.

Watson was clearly in discomfort during her 6-4 6-0 defeat by Tsvetana Pironkova and later attributed those difficulties to “girl problems,” provoking a worldwide debate on the effect periods have on performance.

And Powell, who last month became the first female winner of the Renault Asia Series title, believes her sport needs to get up to speed with the issue.

“I’d like more advice with it,” she told Sky Sports News HQ. “At the minute there’s not a lot (of information) out there but you learn to manage it. You learn to manage the different kinds of symptoms you develop.

“I can put on one to two kilos of weight and I remember one time that sticks out a couple of years ago.

“I went on to the weighing scales for driver weighing and one of the mechanics was like, ‘Whoa you’ve put on so much weight'. I was thinking ‘No I haven’t’ but I couldn’t say it was just that time of the month because it was a bit embarrassing at the time.

“You’re there on the spot, your weight gets read out and a lot of the other drivers are there as well. It affects women in different ways. I can sometimes feel quite tired which is not ideal when you want be racing a race car.”

Powell was speaking at Wembley Stadium at the launch of the Women’s Sports Trust Be A Game Changer Awards where she was joined by Arsenal Ladies and England striker Kelly Smith.

Team GB and England hockey captain Kate Richardson-Walsh was also supporting the launch and the 34-year-old insists her club side Reading takes a more proactive approach to tackling the issue.

“We’re a squad of 30 women who spend every day together. We talk about these things all the time and we monitor our menstrual cycle,” she said.

“Our strength and conditioning coaches know when our cycles are and we talk about the physical side effects of that and it’s different for every individual.”

Richardson-Walsh’s Team GB and England team-mate Alex Danson added: “For myself personally, throughout that stage of the month I will increase my iron intake and I know that will have a positive performance benefit for me.