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In running, female only trophies follow the same philosophy as age group trophies. Overall winner is reserved for whoever crosses the line first. Then there are

In running, female only trophies follow the same philosophy as age group trophies. Overall winner is reserved for whoever crosses the line first. Then there are M/F age groups for older runners (5y wide age groups most often starting at 30), and "female overall winner". Having male only trophies is most often redundant because 99% of overall winners are male. That's just life. From time to time, an high/elite level female runner shows up when there are no elite male runner and she takes the overall winner. And that only happens in niche races (niche being every race longer than a marathon and some smaller city races). Ultras are also more likely to have DNFs (did not finish). There's yet to be a popular race (6 majors, olympics, world championship, even regular "city marathons" etc.) where there's an overall female winner, because both m/f elites show up and men win by a huge margin.

leguminous 7y ago
> There's yet to be a popular race (6 majors, olympics, world championship, even regular "city marathons" etc.) where there's an overall female winner [...] It wasn't a major city race and probably had a lot of casual runners, but I ran a half marathon earlier this year with around 20,000 participants. A woman won the overall in 1:18:30. The people who are good at this are just so much better at it than the average person. A fast woman, even if she isn't faster than the fastest men, will still be faster than 99.9+% of them.
- finebalance 7y ago
  >The people who are good at this are just so much better at it than the average person. A fast woman, even if she isn't faster than the fastest men, will still be faster than 99.9+% of them. That's not in doubt. An extremely skilled person will outcompete the field, all other things being equal. Unfortunately, with reference to most sports, all other things aren't equal, which is why good high-school male teams in sports such as soccer can credibly compete with national-level adult female teams.
- davidrm 7y ago
  But 1:18 is far far away from any professional result. That’s actually confirming what I said. I’m friends with two people who can beat that (1:16, 1:15). They have day jobs. That race just wasn’t that competitive, even if it had 20k runners.
throwaway55554 7y ago
Yet another thinly veiled contemptuous comment crapping on a woman's accomplishments using vague pseudo-facts. It's funny how HN claims to be better than, say reddit, and yet there continues to be this undercurrent of women bashing. This woman accomplished something awesome. Trying to say she didn't because the very best of the best men wasn't there to outrun her, doesn't change that. On that day, she was the best. Period. EDIT: DOWN VOTE ME TO OBLIVION, BUT YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T CHALLENGE ME ON THIS POINT!
- yostrovs 7y ago
  Today you're the best. There might be a good argument for your opinion, but today yours is the best one.
- emptyfile 7y ago
  Now I'm interested, what exactly in the parent comment is a "pseudo fact"?
  - throwaway55554 7y ago
    > Having male only trophies is most often redundant because 99% of overall winners are male. That's just life. From time to time, an high/elite level female runner shows up when there are no elite male runner and she takes the overall winner. And that only happens in niche races (niche being every race longer than a marathon and some smaller city races). Ultras are also more likely to have DNFs (did not finish). This entire paragraph.
- bardworx 7y ago
  I disagreed, to a degree with the original comment but to be fair, he wasn’t bashing or downplaying women. I’m making the assumption that it’s a male based on username. He did, however, pointed to some interesting things and areas which should be explored and debated but your comment, on the other hand, is really aggressive and does not open the conversation to a positive discourse. Instead of saying “vague pseudo-facts”, why not find some and post as counter point? And who said HN is better than Reddit? Perhaps more moderated but we’re all human which means we have shitty opinions rooted in nonsense. This doesn’t stop if you register on HN, we just have shitty HN opinion instead of shitty Reddit opinion. And most importantly, you buried the whole point of your comment because of your anger: the winner of the race did something amazing and should be 100% celebrated. She beat the competition, regardless who was there (male vs female). She can’t control who she runs against. Hence, she deserves to be a champion without an asterisk. Downvoted were for your tone (I didn’t down nor up vote), not the content of your comment.
bardworx 7y ago
I’m not 100% sold on your statement. One simple argument you’re making is that men are stronger than women, which is currently true. But why? From googling for a few min, I found some interesting stuff; For example, women were not allowed to compete in Boston marathon until 1970s [0]. And times within the some groups of runners, since women began competing, is displaying a trend that men vs women times are getting closer (same article). So this begs the question: since women haven’t been allowed to compete in sports for thousands of years, what will happen to their bodies when they are allowed to compete? In other words, on a long enough time scale, I believe that certain sports will have equal competition (running is one). There are also clear cases and valid reasons for men being stronger/more fit but the main culprits, in at least endurance sports, is total body fat and hemoglobin [1]. I’m not 100% certain these factors cannot, over time, be diluted into equilibrium. I’m not a scientist and don’t study such things but my guess is that male dominance won’t always be as pronounced as some folks think. One totally unscientific reason for my hypothesis is that there are just too many edge cases in sports that proved people wrong. The most famous ones, I can think of are: sprinters shouldn’t run standing up (Bolt). NBA players not shooting Free Throws underhand (Berry). [0]: https://www.outsideonline.com/2386436/are-women-closing-men-boston-marathon https://www.outsideonline.com/2386436/are-women-closing-men-... [1]: https://www.outsideonline.com/2336111/defining-upper-limits-fitness https://www.outsideonline.com/2336111/defining-upper-limits-...
- megla_ 7y ago
  Were men hunters and women gatherers because of gender norms?
  - bardworx 7y ago
    No. Women are a more valuable resource and hence had to be protected. If most men die, we can repopulate if there is a large population that is able to birth young. If most women die, resources are diminished because of time consideration. Men go to war because they’re expandable. Why are you bringing in gender norms into the equation?
- wtdata 7y ago
  > since women haven’t been allowed to compete in sports for thousands of years, what will happen to their bodies when they are allowed to compete? I am not sure I get it. Are you suggesting that the reason men dominate almost all sports is not due to their undoubtedly greater physical capacity, but due to some societal discrimination? Also, are your suggesting that evolution works such that appreciable biological differences show up in just a few thousand years?
throwaway_law 7y ago
>There's yet to be a popular race (6 majors, olympics, world championship, even regular "city marathons" etc.) where there's an overall female winner Courtney Dauwalter dominates men in Ultra races, you can call them niche races if it helps your ego, but lets call those races what they really are...the longest and most grueling races, stacked with elite and professional runners.
- zaroth 7y ago
  Good fact presented poorly.
  - throwaway_law 7y ago
    Is it better to just present falsehoods as facts in a polished manner? Or downplay woman's accomplishments as niche, when its clearly the harder accomplishment? What causes one to do those things?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - el_cujo 7y ago
      Surely you're not arguing that these ultra-marathons aren't niche compared to, say, the New York City marathon or marathons in the Olympics? It seems like a bad-faith argument to assume the person you first responded to is belittling the races just because women can and do win them, rather than because they get MUCH less publicity/interest. No reasonable person is going to suggest a 50K marathon isn't physically way harder than a standard marathon.
      - throwaway_law 7y ago
        >Surely you're not arguing that these ultra-marathons aren't niche compared The speed advantage men have, and I never said they didn't, is lost/leveled over distance, so to dismiss these longer races where women can and will filter to the top is odd when making a point about men's superiority. Do less people run them, sure, does that make them niche? No, thousands of people still run Ultra's, its not like we are talking about 1 trained woman and a bunch of untrained men. >It seems like a bad-faith argument to assume the person you first responded to is belittling the races just because women can and do win them, rather than because they get MUCH less publicity/interest. "And that only happens in niche races (niche being every race longer than a marathon..." I don't think it is bad-faith to interpret the post as saying, men are better than women, but acknowledge women do sometimes beat men (statistically more likely in longer races), but then broad brush stroke those wins as "only in" niche races. But I'm not going to get stuck in debating what is niche, especially when it has now devolved into "more niche than marathons." Nothing wrong with remaining objective that men do have a clear speed advantage over women, but that advantage diminishes over long distance, but maybe I am wrong, maybe we should disregard women's wins automatically as niche races. >No reasonable person is going to suggest a 50K marathon isn't physically way harder than a standard marathon. People in this thread have.
Misdicorl 7y ago
But the gap is closing!

leguminous 7y ago

> There's yet to be a popular race (6 majors, olympics, world championship, even regular "city marathons" etc.) where there's an overall female winner [...] It wasn't a major city race and probably had a lot of casual runners, but I ran a half marathon earlier this year with around 20,000 participants. A woman won the overall in 1:18:30. The people who are good at this are just so much better at it than the average person. A fast woman, even if she isn't faster than the fastest men, will still be faster than 99.9+% of them.

finebalance 7y ago
>The people who are good at this are just so much better at it than the average person. A fast woman, even if she isn't faster than the fastest men, will still be faster than 99.9+% of them. That's not in doubt. An extremely skilled person will outcompete the field, all other things being equal. Unfortunately, with reference to most sports, all other things aren't equal, which is why good high-school male teams in sports such as soccer can credibly compete with national-level adult female teams.
davidrm 7y ago
But 1:18 is far far away from any professional result. That’s actually confirming what I said. I’m friends with two people who can beat that (1:16, 1:15). They have day jobs. That race just wasn’t that competitive, even if it had 20k runners.

throwaway55554 7y ago

Yet another thinly veiled contemptuous comment crapping on a woman's accomplishments using vague pseudo-facts. It's funny how HN claims to be better than, say reddit, and yet there continues to be this undercurrent of women bashing. This woman accomplished something awesome. Trying to say she didn't because the very best of the best men wasn't there to outrun her, doesn't change that. On that day, she was the best. Period. EDIT: DOWN VOTE ME TO OBLIVION, BUT YOU KNOW YOU CAN'T CHALLENGE ME ON THIS POINT!

yostrovs 7y ago
Today you're the best. There might be a good argument for your opinion, but today yours is the best one.
emptyfile 7y ago
Now I'm interested, what exactly in the parent comment is a "pseudo fact"?
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  > Having male only trophies is most often redundant because 99% of overall winners are male. That's just life. From time to time, an high/elite level female runner shows up when there are no elite male runner and she takes the overall winner. And that only happens in niche races (niche being every race longer than a marathon and some smaller city races). Ultras are also more likely to have DNFs (did not finish). This entire paragraph.
bardworx 7y ago
I disagreed, to a degree with the original comment but to be fair, he wasn’t bashing or downplaying women. I’m making the assumption that it’s a male based on username. He did, however, pointed to some interesting things and areas which should be explored and debated but your comment, on the other hand, is really aggressive and does not open the conversation to a positive discourse. Instead of saying “vague pseudo-facts”, why not find some and post as counter point? And who said HN is better than Reddit? Perhaps more moderated but we’re all human which means we have shitty opinions rooted in nonsense. This doesn’t stop if you register on HN, we just have shitty HN opinion instead of shitty Reddit opinion. And most importantly, you buried the whole point of your comment because of your anger: the winner of the race did something amazing and should be 100% celebrated. She beat the competition, regardless who was there (male vs female). She can’t control who she runs against. Hence, she deserves to be a champion without an asterisk. Downvoted were for your tone (I didn’t down nor up vote), not the content of your comment.

bardworx 7y ago

I’m not 100% sold on your statement. One simple argument you’re making is that men are stronger than women, which is currently true. But why? From googling for a few min, I found some interesting stuff; For example, women were not allowed to compete in Boston marathon until 1970s [0]. And times within the some groups of runners, since women began competing, is displaying a trend that men vs women times are getting closer (same article). So this begs the question: since women haven’t been allowed to compete in sports for thousands of years, what will happen to their bodies when they are allowed to compete? In other words, on a long enough time scale, I believe that certain sports will have equal competition (running is one). There are also clear cases and valid reasons for men being stronger/more fit but the main culprits, in at least endurance sports, is total body fat and hemoglobin [1]. I’m not 100% certain these factors cannot, over time, be diluted into equilibrium. I’m not a scientist and don’t study such things but my guess is that male dominance won’t always be as pronounced as some folks think. One totally unscientific reason for my hypothesis is that there are just too many edge cases in sports that proved people wrong. The most famous ones, I can think of are: sprinters shouldn’t run standing up (Bolt). NBA players not shooting Free Throws underhand (Berry). [0]: https://www.outsideonline.com/2386436/are-women-closing-men-boston-marathon https://www.outsideonline.com/2386436/are-women-closing-men-... [1]: https://www.outsideonline.com/2336111/defining-upper-limits-fitness https://www.outsideonline.com/2336111/defining-upper-limits-...

megla_ 7y ago
Were men hunters and women gatherers because of gender norms?
- bardworx 7y ago
  No. Women are a more valuable resource and hence had to be protected. If most men die, we can repopulate if there is a large population that is able to birth young. If most women die, resources are diminished because of time consideration. Men go to war because they’re expandable. Why are you bringing in gender norms into the equation?
wtdata 7y ago
> since women haven’t been allowed to compete in sports for thousands of years, what will happen to their bodies when they are allowed to compete? I am not sure I get it. Are you suggesting that the reason men dominate almost all sports is not due to their undoubtedly greater physical capacity, but due to some societal discrimination? Also, are your suggesting that evolution works such that appreciable biological differences show up in just a few thousand years?

throwaway_law 7y ago

>There's yet to be a popular race (6 majors, olympics, world championship, even regular "city marathons" etc.) where there's an overall female winner Courtney Dauwalter dominates men in Ultra races, you can call them niche races if it helps your ego, but lets call those races what they really are...the longest and most grueling races, stacked with elite and professional runners.

zaroth 7y ago
Good fact presented poorly.
- throwaway_law 7y ago
  Is it better to just present falsehoods as facts in a polished manner? Or downplay woman's accomplishments as niche, when its clearly the harder accomplishment? What causes one to do those things?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - el_cujo 7y ago
    Surely you're not arguing that these ultra-marathons aren't niche compared to, say, the New York City marathon or marathons in the Olympics? It seems like a bad-faith argument to assume the person you first responded to is belittling the races just because women can and do win them, rather than because they get MUCH less publicity/interest. No reasonable person is going to suggest a 50K marathon isn't physically way harder than a standard marathon.
    - throwaway_law 7y ago
      >Surely you're not arguing that these ultra-marathons aren't niche compared The speed advantage men have, and I never said they didn't, is lost/leveled over distance, so to dismiss these longer races where women can and will filter to the top is odd when making a point about men's superiority. Do less people run them, sure, does that make them niche? No, thousands of people still run Ultra's, its not like we are talking about 1 trained woman and a bunch of untrained men. >It seems like a bad-faith argument to assume the person you first responded to is belittling the races just because women can and do win them, rather than because they get MUCH less publicity/interest. "And that only happens in niche races (niche being every race longer than a marathon..." I don't think it is bad-faith to interpret the post as saying, men are better than women, but acknowledge women do sometimes beat men (statistically more likely in longer races), but then broad brush stroke those wins as "only in" niche races. But I'm not going to get stuck in debating what is niche, especially when it has now devolved into "more niche than marathons." Nothing wrong with remaining objective that men do have a clear speed advantage over women, but that advantage diminishes over long distance, but maybe I am wrong, maybe we should disregard women's wins automatically as niche races. >No reasonable person is going to suggest a 50K marathon isn't physically way harder than a standard marathon. People in this thread have.

Misdicorl 7y ago

But the gap is closing!