2 ms·

How is that worse than having the same category for tall and short people? I see nothing magic about sex as a differentiator. It's not the sex organs that wou

by ken 17y ago

How is that worse than having the same category for tall and short people? I see nothing magic about sex as a differentiator. It's not the sex organs that would cause the imbalance. It's sport-specific physical differences, like height and muscle mass, which happen to be partially linked to sex. But once you admit that some people should have their own category because of a genetic coin-flip, why would you limit this to women? (Sounds pretty sexist to me!) Wouldn't it be equally fair to have an olympic medal for, say, fastest 100m run by a man under 5'6"? To answer your question, what I'd like to see is for people to realize how silly the current set of sports are -- virtually all slight variants of either "person moves an object downfield into a goal" or "person runs/jumps/lifts very fast for short distance" -- and a shift towards sports which are more equal to all people. Where are the sports that reward balance and rhythm and endurance more than speed and strength? Where are the sports for which sufficient training negates virtually any genetic luck? For example, most of the best rock climbers and martial artists I know are not just short, but downright tiny. In races, women do better relative to men when distances are longer: I doubt I'll ever see a woman make up the 0.9 seconds to overtake the fastest man in the 100m, but I also doubt I'll ever see a man make up the 5 hours to overtake the fastest woman in the decaironman. If you start with the set of sports for which men hold a huge relative advantage (like any professional team sport in the USA), no categorization will ever truly make up for it. The fix, then, is to change the sports. This isn't as radical as it might sound, e.g., (American) football started with a round ball which gradually got pointier as people decided they liked passing more. We get the sports we optimize for, and I don't know what we're optimizing for but it certainly isn't sexual equality. As long as we have sex categorization, that's basically impossible.

xiaoma 17y ago
>I doubt I'll ever see a woman make up the 0.9 seconds to overtake the fastest man in the 100m, but I also doubt I'll ever see a man make up the 5 hours to overtake the fastest woman in the decaironman. In general men's times are significantly better than women's for ultra-ironman races, including the deca. The one woman who did set a bunch of records, Astrid Benöhr, is a verified cheater. http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/results/mexico_deca.html http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/results/mexi... >Marco Flores reports: "During the Deca, Astrid Benöhr was disqualified due to taking shortcuts during the running trial. This was done in the middle of the night and was observed by athletes, maintenance people and support crews. Nobody reported this to the organizers until, finally, one of the members of Guy Rossi's support crew was surprised by the disappearance of the athlete on the course and reappearing very soon after Guy's arrival. This was reported. The times were checked and this gave way to suspicion, on behalf of the organizers, who stationed inspectors all night. They confirmed the occurrence and a video was taken of this athlete taking a significant shortcut of the running course, which is run in a loop. Subsequently the athlete was disqualified." http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/records.html#trirecord http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/records.html... This link is a bit dated, but it does show records as of 1997 for ironman, double ironman, triple, quadruple, penta and deca events. Men are ahead in all of them. In 1999, Astrid Benöhr set records in the quintuple and the deca. If her victories were legitimate, a possible factor may be that she limited herself to only about 8.5 hours of sleep for the entire 187 hours of her race. It reminds me somewhat of how a 61 year-old farmer, Cliff Young, won a grueling 875 km race from Sydney to Melbourne, despite the fact that the competition included professional athletes. He absolutely crushed the field and set a course record. Was it because old men have a biological advantage? No. It was because he was the only runner who chose not to sleep. http://www.elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young-the-61-year-old-farmer-that-won-the-worlds-toughest-race http://www.elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young-the-61-ye...

by ken 17y ago

xiaoma 17y ago

>I doubt I'll ever see a woman make up the 0.9 seconds to overtake the fastest man in the 100m, but I also doubt I'll ever see a man make up the 5 hours to overtake the fastest woman in the decaironman. In general men's times are significantly better than women's for ultra-ironman races, including the deca. The one woman who did set a bunch of records, Astrid Benöhr, is a verified cheater. http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/results/mexico_deca.html http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/results/mexi... >Marco Flores reports: "During the Deca, Astrid Benöhr was disqualified due to taking shortcuts during the running trial. This was done in the middle of the night and was observed by athletes, maintenance people and support crews. Nobody reported this to the organizers until, finally, one of the members of Guy Rossi's support crew was surprised by the disappearance of the athlete on the course and reappearing very soon after Guy's arrival. This was reported. The times were checked and this gave way to suspicion, on behalf of the organizers, who stationed inspectors all night. They confirmed the occurrence and a video was taken of this athlete taking a significant shortcut of the running course, which is run in a loop. Subsequently the athlete was disqualified." http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/records.html#trirecord http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/ultramentor/records.html... This link is a bit dated, but it does show records as of 1997 for ironman, double ironman, triple, quadruple, penta and deca events. Men are ahead in all of them. In 1999, Astrid Benöhr set records in the quintuple and the deca. If her victories were legitimate, a possible factor may be that she limited herself to only about 8.5 hours of sleep for the entire 187 hours of her race. It reminds me somewhat of how a 61 year-old farmer, Cliff Young, won a grueling 875 km race from Sydney to Melbourne, despite the fact that the competition included professional athletes. He absolutely crushed the field and set a course record. Was it because old men have a biological advantage? No. It was because he was the only runner who chose not to sleep. http://www.elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young-the-61-year-old-farmer-that-won-the-worlds-toughest-race http://www.elitefeet.com/the-legend-of-cliff-young-the-61-ye...