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Splainin’ Myself about Women’s Sports
On another post, relating to the Olympics, I commented: “But the women athletes are third-rate, if even. They do well against women. They are almost never competitive with the men.” Some of the ladies weren’t very happy with me about this. I think that my claim is objectively true and I am going to illustrate with my own sport, swimming. I was a pretty good high school swimmer back in the mid-1980s. So here are the facts:
In swimming, the men and the women generally swim the same events, at the same distances, in the same pool, off the same blocks. They are carefully timed, electronically, to the hundredth of a second. Results are entirely objective.
I’m going to start by comparing the women’s Olympic gold medal results, during this past week, to the men’s. The competition is ongoing, so I include a few examples in which both the men’s and women’s competitions are completed. It is important to note that if, for example, the winning woman’s time would have placed, say, 30th among the men, this does not mean that she is the 30th best swimmer in the world at the event in question. Each country can only send two athletes to compete in each event. There will be a number of men who didn’t make the cut, but who had times better than the women’s champion.
Emma McKeon of Australia just won the women’s 100 m freestyle today, with an Olympic record time of 51.96. That time would have placed her 55th in the men’s qualifying heats this week. It would not have made even the (slower) Wave I cut for the US men’s Olympic team trials (50.49). In the heats of the US men’s Wave II trials last month, McKeon’s gold medal time would have placed 61st. There were 60 male competitors.
Ariane Titmus of Australia won the women’s 200 m freestyle this week, with an Olympic record time of 1:53.50. That time would have placed her 39th in the men’s qualifying heats this week. It would not have made even the (slower) Wave I cut for the US men’s Olympic team trials (1:50.79). In the heats of the US men’s Wave II trials last month, Titmus’s gold medal time would have placed 51st. There were 50 male competitors.
Katie Ledecky, who dominates distance events among the women, won the inaugural women’s 1500 m freestyle this week, with a time of 15:37.34. The men have not yet competed in this event this year. Ledecky would have placed 43rd in the men’s qualifying heats at the 2016 Olympics, and the men’s winner in 2016 beat her time by over 52 seconds. Ledecky’s gold medal time would have made the slower Wave I cut for the US men’s Olympic team trials (15:44.89), but not the faster Wave II cut (15:35.69). In the heats of the US men’s Wave II trials last month, Ledecky’s gold medal time would have placed 22nd.
Now we can do another comparison. There’s a database of times maintained by USA Swimming (here). I searched the men’s times for a single year (July 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021) for the three events noted above. The search engine lists the top 100 times.
- Emma McKeon’s gold medal time of 51.96 in the 100 free was far slower than the 100th male time (50.28 by Evan Carlson).
- Ariane Titmus’s gold medal time of 1:53.50 in the 200 free was far slower than the 100th male time (1:51.57 by Kacper Stokowski).
- Even Katie Ledecky’s gold medal time of 15:37.34 in the 1500 free was slower than the top 38 male times.
I could go on, but I think that you get the point. In fact, you can compare the women’s Olympic gold medal results (here) with the US men’s Olympic team cuts (here). With the competition completed in 8 of the 11 women’s events (not the 50 m free, 800 m free, and 200 m backstrokes):
- None of the women’s gold medal times would have made the Wave II cut to get into the US men’s Olympic trials.
- Only two of the women’s gold medal times would have made even the slower, Wave I cut to get into the US men’s Olympic trials (Titmus in the 400 free and Ledecky in the 1500 free).
Unfortunately, I can’t compare the women’s Olympic results directly to men’s college or high school results, because the distances aren’t comparable. Olympic swimming is long course meters, meaning that it uses a 50-meter pool. College and high school swimming is typically short course yards, meaning that they use a 25-yard pool.
There is one comparison possible, however. According to this page at SwimSwam, the current American women’s record in the 100-yard freestyle is 46.29. I was able to find the 2017 results for the Arizona high school boys competition, and the winning time was 46.04, faster than the women’s American record.
This is consistent with my recollection. According to the same SwimSwam page, the women’s American record from 1983 to 1988 in the 100 yard free was 48.40. Missed it by that much! I won the City Championship in Tucson back in 1984, with a time of 48.48. I was not good enough to get a college swimming scholarship, but I was competitive with the best women in the world. When I was a sixteen-year-old boy.
This seems generally consistent with my impression of other sports. The women’s Olympic champion is usually about as good as the high school boy’s champion of a medium-sized state.
Facts don’t care about your feelings.
I don’t know why we encourage women to be third-rate men when they could be first-rate women.
Published in Sports
Men may have trouble doing the uneven parallel bars in gymnastics. I mean they could probably do it…but they would probably need help walking for a few days…and perhaps performing other critical tasks.
I don’t understand the “third-rate” comment. You should just say it was wrong rather than going on about men and women being physically different.
I find myself wondering, what are the high school girls’ times like?
Lulu Garcia Navarro is just an standard NPR reporter who got really offended when John McEnroe said that Serena Williams is the best female tennis player in the world. Navarro wanted to know why he “qualified” the statement and why he didn’t just say she is the best. That was a softball lobbed waist-high down the center, but McEnroe swung and missed by a mile. All he had to say was, “Because she is not the best. Any one of the top ten men players would easily defeat her”, and let it go at that. But he got defensive. I wonder if he got in trouble with his wife as well.
I expect that’s a pretty common reason why a lot of men aren’t honest in public.
There’s a Wikipedia article, as yet unsuppressed, entitled “Battle of the Sexes (Tennis)”, that is worth a look. According to it, Serena Williams herself estimates that the top 350 male players could beat her.
That liberals don’t comprehend the sheer size of the performance difference between the sexes may be one reason why they are not concerned about “transgender women” competing in female athletic events.
Well sure, if you’ve already convinced yourself that there’s no difference between men and women, then it wouldn’t matter if one is born a woman or “becomes a woman later in life.” :-)
You’re not informing us of anything we don’t know. Of course women have physical limitations. I don’t understand your last sentence. Aren’t we encouraging them to be first rate women? The best female athletes are elite amongst their peers. They’re reaching their highest potential. Are you suggesting women shouldn’t compete in sports?
Well, I could be wrong but I think at least part of his point, or one of his points if there are more than one, is that women athletes are NOT reaching their highest potential, because their highest potential as women doesn’t involve being athletes.
And if people want to really see the best athletes, they’ll be watching men, not women.
Yes. We are NOT interchangeable; we are complementary. After a life spent working in “a man’s world” – 4 years as a Navy Officer, 34 years in Software Development – I look back and have to think my time could have been better spent. I’m good at what I do, but it’s never felt like a good fit.
You can’t have it both ways. Either you identify ‘men’ and ‘women’ as different, and you allow for both to be first-rate within their spheres of capability; or you lump them together, and criticize one sex as somehow substandard (‘third-rate’) because both sexes are not equally competitive at any one particular activity.
I don’t believe that men are ‘third-rate’ because they’re unable to get pregnant and have babies. (Yes, I do believe that only women can get pregnant. I’m that old-fashioned.) I believe that’s a simple distinction between the sexes. And I think it’s helpful not to characterize those differences as, somehow, differences in worth (which is what ‘third-rate’ implies).
I think Ronald Reagan was right, when he said what he did about ‘explaining.’
Leaving aside the term “third-rate”, no one actually disputes this. You could have saved a lot of time poring over swimming statistics as literally no one here believes otherwise. That’s why we all hate the transgender boys playing on girls’ teams phenomenon.
What you also said, was
Which is not quite as chock-full of facts and statistics as your other point.
Ironically, I can’t stick around to talk about this at the moment since I have to go to a class at the gym. I hope I don’t embarrass myself by being an unwomanly pretend third-rate man because I use a smaller kettlebell than the dudes.
I’m good with almost everything Jerry has to say here except with what I see as an implication that women should not be doing any of these things in which they can be viewed as ‘third-rate’ performers.
This is one reason I don’t watch anymore. They are already mixing men and women in certain competitions that depend very directly on physical capabilities.
Jerry is good with words and he is a good thinker so I think he does things this way sometimes just to get a good edge in the conversation.
Williams (either Serena or Venus) actually agreed with him . . .
There comes a time when digging a hole one should say to himself I believe this hole is deep enough, and then set aside the shovel. ;)
Yes, maybe Jerry can recover if he would discuss the fact that men are losing their masculinity and thus their competitiveness and what this means.
I was planning a post on this very subject. When I finally gave up trying to be more masculine in my approach to my job and instead did what felt right to me, I found that it was exactly the right approach in some situations but clearly not in others. How did I know? By the outcomes. It became, however, the most satisfying professional period in my life because I felt comfortable in being completely honest about my strengths and completely willing to admit that I would run a project according to them and if that was not was needed, then I would happily step aside.
Jerry is actually making a very good point about the stupidity of allowing transgender men to compete in women’s sports. It’s all about the science on the Left when it comes to Covid, or even climate change. All about the science goes out the window when it comes to chromosomes.
As I commented on the other thread, there are two sports in the Olympics where I vastly prefer the female to the male version: gymnastics and figure skating. As I recall, these are among the most highly sought after tickets in the competition. So in what way are these women considered third class? I admit that for sports that require speed and strength, I prefer the male versions and the ticket demand also reflects this. However, I remember my father saying that he preferred women’s college basketball to the NBA because he liked the passing and the playmaking, rather than the slam dunks and posturing. So when women play their game, instead of creating a less masculine version of a male sport, they can do well. But even if they didn’t, women like the competition of sports, and we fought hard in the 1970’s to recognize that fact. When I was growing up, there were few competitive sports for women and I wanted to play just like my brothers did.
I agree with the post, as my comment above reflects, that when women complete head to head in traditionally male sports, they generally lose and that is just the physical reality. I reject utterly, however, the characterization of females as third rate male athletes. I do not in any way, shape or form feel compelled to compare female athletes to male athletes, I don’t care what the prevailing ideology is. Modern feminists, to their eternal shame, define women in masculine terms and denigrate feminine traits. They are no longer feminists, just vanilla leftists, and they do not speak to or for me.
I’m suggesting that high-end sports competition is inappropriate for women, except in a few artistic events like ice skating and gymnastics, which are more akin to dance and, therefore, more aesthetic than athletic. I like such events.
There’s something strange about a woman committing most of her life to reaching a pinnacle of athletic ability, for her, when she will not be remotely competitive with the best athletes on the planet. If an adult man was spending 6-8 hours a day working out at swimming, in order to achieve a time comparable to a good high school boy, I would suggest that he find a more productive use of his time.
There’s also an issue with the “highest potential” concept in this context. Women’s bodies are not designed for athletic excellence at the highest levels. They are designed, frankly, for motherhood. Motherhood is essential, and amazing, and it is something that men cannot do at all.
I have no objection to women who enjoy a sport, and compete for fun and fitness. This is a good thing. I have the same opinion about men of mundane levels of ability, which is just about all of us. But at this level, no one gets to be a “hero,” except in the narrow and fleeting sense that hitting a home run at a club softball game makes you the team hero of the week.
At the very edges of human achievement, that we see in the Olympics, we are looking at the extreme tails of the bell curve.
It demonstrates some things.
I agree for the most part, Bob.
There is an interesting event that will debut in Olympic Swimming this year, the 4×100 m mixed medley relay. There are two men and two women on each team.
I think that it will be fun to watch.
It is going to be a bit strange, because in the medley relay, each swimmer swims a different stroke. So you could have a man matched up against a woman in the backstroke leg, and then the reverse in the breaststroke leg.
@arizonapatriot What is productive about men spending 6-8 hours a day working out at whatever sport in order to achieve the pinnacle in men’s competition in that sport? Obviously, fitness. What else? Maybe, entertainment for spectators. Perhaps women themselves might have some perspectives on the entertainment aspect of a spectator sport and who they like to see participating. Is looking into to this or recognizing it what we term empathy? Maybe we men don’t have much.
There is probably something productive that I missed.
True up to a point. Gymnastics, for example, has different but similar competions – parallel bars and horizontal bar vs. uneven parallel bars, the vault vs. the pommel horse, and the rings vs. the balance beam. I guess both do floor exercises, but the routines are different.
However, tests of strength and endurance tend to put men and women in different categories, so putting men into tests of strength and endurance with women is highly unfair and very unsporting . . .
Good question. In swimming, it looks like the time gap is about 10%.
As an example, I used the Arizona high school boy’s result in 2017 for the 100 yard free, in which the winning time was 46.04. The winning girl’s time in Arizona, that year, was 52.66, which is 14% slower.
A couple of examples from the Olympics this year are: (1) a 10.5% gap in the 100 free (47.02/51.96); (2) a 11.8% gap in the 200 IM (1:55.00/2:08.52). Eyeballing it, the gap looked similar in the other events, perhaps getting a bit smaller at the longer distances.
We don’t yet have the men’s results for the 1500 free this year, but based on the world records, the gap is smaller, 5.7% (14:31.02/15:20.48). However, this narrow gap may be due entirely to Katie Ledecky, who holds that women’s world record. Back in 2012, before Ledecky, the gap was 8.2% (14:31.02/15:42.54). Ledecky has slowed significantly, to 15:37.34 — almost 17 seconds off her record — but she still won the event by over 4 seconds.
The differential looks similar in track, based on world records. In the 100 m, it is 9.5% (9.58/10.49). In the marathon, it is 10.2% (2:01.39/2:14.04).
This will vary for different types of events.
Well, there’s getting a good edge and then there’s getting a frisson of excitement from saying dickish things just to get a rise out of people.
This is a good question. And it can be applied to both sexes and just about every activity that has a leisure component. How about spending 6-8 hours a day working on a stamp collection? Doing latch hook? Compiling swimming statistics? Writing 2,000-word posts on an obscure website trying to disprove the existence of homosexuality? What’s productive about any of that?