A photo of a triathlete with menstrual bleeding caused a stir. Her reaction shut mouths - voila! sport

Weekly Summary, 1.6 (Sport 1)

British triathlete Emma Plant-Brown finished fourth at the European Open in Ibiza earlier this month in triathlon, but for many, she secured an equally important victory. The athlete posted a photo on social media to celebrate her performance at the competition, with the photo showing a blood stain on the groin area of her running suit.

"Celebrating the amazing women in sports, and the equally amazing men who support them," she shared with her 46,000 followers. Plant-Brown added: "I'm thrilled by the amount of messages I've received from both men and women about the unglamorous reality of racing with menstruation."

The athlete said she chose to share the photo to remove the stigma surrounding menstruation. Plant-Brown said she refused to "edit" the stain and remove it from the image because it conveys as if "it's something that's wrong."

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A post shared by Emma Pallant-Browne (@em_pallant)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Emma Pallant-Browne (@em_pallant)

"In a lot of the pictures you can't see anything, you can pour water on yourself at aid stations, it will do the trick, and if that doesn't happen you end up with one photo like that, but the idea of editing it says there's something wrong with it," she wrote.

She admitted that while she had darker suits to hide her period stains, she chose to wear her lighter suit to "try the chilling effect."

"If you write to me and say that 99 percent of women will be embarrassed by this, that's exactly why I'm sharing it, because there's really nothing wrong. It's natural. As someone who comes from a background of eating problems as a runner and growing up in a place where I didn't get my period, now I see it as a beautiful thing," she continued.

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A post shared by Emma Pallant-Browne (@em_pallant)

However, not everyone was amused by Plant-Brown's efforts, as one person commented: "Not the most flattering picture of Em Plant - surely you could cut it a little better."

The decorated athlete, who won 18 semi-Iron Man competitions and a silver medal at the World Championships, received a slew of responses, including from "disgusted" amplifiers who advised her to crop the photo in a different way. "Thank you for caring," she wrote to one, "but it's definitely something I'm not ashamed to talk about because that's the reality for women in sports." She then received a slew of supportive comments, including from her rivals, and dozens of users and followers.

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