Women in competitive sport

Genuinely not being a troll here but...heard some peeps talking about this recently and wondered if they had a point.

I mean women are never going to beat men in anything really. I can't think of any sport where they will go faster, higher, longer whatever else... Nor do I envisage women attracting more of an audience other than in say beach volleyball and thats for different reasons. It has been proved time and time again that a number of women competing at the highlest level are in fact not even women.

It strikes me that if they cant handle it with the men their events are as worthwhile as having tournaments for people sub 6' tall or people who deem themselves lazy or other unnecessary brackets.

What do you reckon?

Since men do not swim as fast as orcas, what is the point in men's swimming tournaments?

Well this is Passion Week, and it looks like someone is a glutton for punishment. This should be an entertaining thread to read.

Now youre just being silly.

They are a different species and humans are in charge of the planet when I last looked so its right that we try and outdo each other.

But having events for women is like them saying "we can't do this as well as the ones we breed with and populate the planet with, but its the taking part that counts."

Pish posh.

Women have as much a right to compete in sports as men. Just because they will never be able to beat men does not mean that they should not be allowed to compete. However, notwithstanding that, it is obvious that men will always beat women when it comes to sport.

People with intellectual and physical disabiliities are allowed to compete in the Special and Paralympics respectively, so I see no reason why women should be excluded from competitive sports.

Thank you for confirming my thoughts about you. Do carry on with your bad self.

the girl I play squash with kicks my arse every single week. she's fitter and faster than me.

Does she have intellectual or physical disabilities though?

By your logic, you shouldn't be writing then.

Im not competitive

lol - apart from wanting to be my friend, no

sounds like she wants to get in your pants too.

There are at least two sports where women compete with men: chess and horse-riding (dressage and showjumping).

In some athletic disciplines (e.g. running), a physical limit seems to have been reached anyway, further improvement can only be achieved by more sophisticated doping. Perhaps slowly but steadily, women will be able to catch up with men.

It's a lot about attitudes and traditions. Not so long ago, everyone laughed at women playing soccer, now they have gained some respect in Germany.

Maybe some women should play for the England football team - I mean they can't do any worse can they?
I must say though I do not find women in sport very sexy except for some of the tennis players and as you say the beach volleyballers.

Oh dear. Lets see. What's the point? Maybe because, difficult as this is to imagine, many women do not define their achievements with respect to men. So there's everything to compete for.

there's that bird who's the deep diving champion as well- apparently women are better at it

but the whole muscley/ scrawny female athlete thing is not very aesthetically pleasing

glad you were inspired to your first post here.


no offence, but thats debatable. ha!

oh yes, she is only interested in banging him, I am pretty sure about that.

Tanya Streeter isn't attractive? Proof (if ever I needed it) that I will never understand men. Not ever.

Stefan Raab thought so too when he challenged female boxer Regina Halmich.

lol yes, everyone knows that squash always leads to sex, often before the game itself has actually finished

sorry, I mean she is quite fit, but girls who do 100m sprinting and stuff like that arn't.

I agree that in the vast majority of sports women cannot compete at the same level as men. However as they do not generally compete against men, who cares. Should every level of organised football in Britain under the Premier League be disbanded because those players can't compete with the likes Ronaldo, Rooney, Lampard etc.? Of course not. Anyone who wants to play can, for whatever reason - to stay fit, for the sheer enjoyment, because they like to compete...

What female athletes should not expect, anymore than male players at less than the top level, is equal exposure in the media or equal pay to that received by the best players.

BTW, one sport which I know of where it women are the best players around is netball - I have seen more than a few highly entertaining international netball games, particularly between Australia and New Zealand. That is one sport where they proabably have a case in complaining about lack of exposure and lack of a quid for the best players.

Game, set, match!

yeah but why?

Yup, there I was waiting for a really inspiring thread. And then I said, ah sure this one will do

Hell no, at least based on the photo on the first page there, she's bloody scary looking!

Rather sad that a thread regarding the merits of women's athletic achievements has so quickly degraded to "do-ability" ratings.

this would explain the recent performance of the Scottish national rugby team...

"I mean women are never going to beat men in anything really. I can't think of any sport where they will go faster, higher, longer whatever else..."

Well I`m from a place that has a saying "Alaska, where Men are Men and Women win the Iditarod" Iditarod is a 1049 mile dog sled race across Alaska. Won several times by women...one won it five times. Theres another race I`ve been invlolved in, Yukon Quest, another plus thousand mile race from Alaska to the Yukon..rightly billed as the " Toughest Race in the World ". This also has been won by a Woman. Some of the toughest competitors I know out on the trails are Women, competing at an equal, if not better level, on an equal basis, with Men, in a sport and environment as tough as it gets.

www.iditarod.com www.yukonquest.com

Yeah but how hard is it to crack a whip at some poor huskies?

Ok ok - I know, I've been sledding when i lived in the hell that is the Kenai peninsula. But come on, the 'women' in Alaska are a... special breed.

From the Science of Sport Blog...

___________

About ten years ago, in an attempt to answer this question, scientists from UCT looked at a large group of runners from the Two Oceans and Comrades marathons. They found out what the runners’ best performances were at distances ranging from 5 km all the way up to Comrades. And what they found is shown in the Figure below.

What this graph shows is that when you look at the SAME person across a range of different distances, then you find that the running speed is higher in the men from 5 km up to 56 km, but that the gap between men and women decreased progressively, until eventually, we hit the Two Oceans at 56 km, and then the men and women run at the same speed! Go one step further, to Comrades, and the women are faster than the men! Remember, the difference between this method and the world records we looked at earlier is that here we are looking at the same person across a range of distances, not the fastest single person in each event. In other words, we’re asking whether a woman who runs as fast as a man at shorter distances is more or less likely to catch up over longer runs. And the answer is a resounding yes!

If sailing is a competitive sport...

Ellen_MacArthur

And if there's one trait that is of particular use to women in Alaska, it's SPEED.

Gliding - a few years ago a woman was UK champion I believe...


I don't think they laughed in Germany - when I first arrived 25+ years ago there used to be regularly (local level) women's football on the sports ground adjacent to the lab I was working at...

Schotte, going by your logic why are you rowing?

If womens sport can bring money in and there is an audience then why not?

The standard argument every year is prize money in Wimbledon. I'm strongly against parity on pay on this one even though I champion equal equality in work as it sets back the whole concept of equal equality. They are not doing the same job, one set is mens tennis players the other women. Equal opportunity would be one tournament with men and women playing against each other.

If the womens tournament brings in more money they should be payed more. I know I'd watch womens tennis ahead of mens. Not only for the obvious reasons but also it's just more entertaining.

Last year the Women`s World Hockey Tourney was held in my home town, every game even the lower level teams (China, Khasikstan) were sold out. But then again, where I come from girls play hockey with the boys til age of 10 in the normal league, and later if they want to, but there is a separate girls league. We don`t care who is playing, we just want to see some good sport.

Not to mention Shannon Szabados, although this will probably mean nothing to people from outside Canada/perhaps the States too..

Where are you getting the women are apparently better at it from ? If you look at her records page you can see the male ones are deeper than the female onces generally:
http://www.redefineyourlimits.com/index.ht...43&sid=9733
Tanya isn't the best because women are generally better at it - she won because she, individually, is the best.
She's also mad as a bat...but thats another story...

Lest ye all have forgotten, the tennis folks had a big public debate on this in the 70's:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Battle_of_the_Sexes