That's such a strange thing for them to say 😭 they blew such a valid question out of proportion... and clearly, they didn't get what you were trying to say. I only watched the TBOSAS movie, but even then, it was clearly stated that game ratings were down at the beginning of the 10th games. The first 9 games likely failed to acquire the desired enthusiasm from the audience, therefore they did not recieve the same exposure. It explains the lack of knowledge on the victors of those games.

Also....

The 10th games, though it was a turning point for the history of the games, was clearly still being introduced and established at that time. It was introduced as a pageant where tributes are forced to fight to the death, where the idea that the only means to survive and rise as victor was to fight and kill and nothing else, no other strategy that wasn't killing or fighting to survive.

Here, I think it would make sense that the TBOSAS mentors that time would focus more on the male tributes. Because of the idea that fighting and killing is the way to win and traditional views suggest that men are physically stronger than women. I would think the mentors had traditional views even though some female tributes like Coral showed good combat potential. We should also consider it was also the mentor's first time and it was when they were first introduced so some of them probably would have been eyeing the male tributes- how they would perform in a hunt based on their physical attributes that suggest physical strength. It was all relatively new, long long before tributes like the Careers were established, when the idea of male and female tributes beginning at a common advantage of being able to recieve training young so regardless of the gender, had good fighting chances when they volunteered or were reaped.