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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
I see the principal answer in the case of competitive sports to be entertainment for which people will pay money. This applies to sports for both sexes even if we can argue that there is a price differential.
Fair. I guess I was thinking about it more in terms of whether the activity is productive/useful for any particular individual in the broader scheme of how he uses his time on earth.
I think one must always be looking for a wealth component (sometimes not clearly apparent) when we ask whether an activity is productive. Athletic skill for which people will pay is just that. Inventive entrepreneurs see these things better than common folks.
That’s a whole ‘nother thread, I think.
Was a middleweight boxer such as Carlos Monzon or Ray Robinson a third-rate boxer because he didn’t compete as a heavyweight? Ali admitted he patterned his style after Robinson, but he’d destroy either one in the ring. Monzon and Robinson had to meet a 160 lb. weight limit while Ali was around 220 and was 6 ft. 3 in. tall. Ali had a great physical advantage, but in terms of skill, not that much, if any.
This statement . . .
Is uncomfortably too similar to this statement.
This is a highly entertaining thread. I’m pretty sure the entrenched opinion of the poster was best expressed in the other thread he wrote, with the words:
A perfectly good opinion, and one he’s entitled to hold.
But an opinion which isn’t supported by attempting to buttress it, with straw man after straw man, that the best women’s times in timed events, and the best women’s strength, in strength events will always be inferior to those of the best men in those sorts of events. I see nobody here arguing against that. Nobody who has a scintilla of sense would waste time arguing such a thing. Because 1) it’s self-evident, and 2) it’s irrelevant to the argument of dysfunctional women–wanting to be men–implied in the premise.
This. I’ll go even further and say that I don’t see much “comparing” of male and female athletes taking place anywhere. Why would we? (I pass over the transgender wars, while noting some concern that disappearing down rabbit-holes such as those expressed in this post really don’t help much when it comes to clarifying concepts like “Men’s sports for Men: Good”–and “Women’s sports for Women: Good.” I believe both those things; but then I’m not conflicted about either of them or suspicious of those who partake.
To sum it up, don’t lots of men’s sports (such as boxing and weight-lifting, both of which I am profoundly ignorant), also divide themselves up into things like “weight classes?” And I don’t think we go around calling the “featherweight” boxing champion “second-class” because–even on his best day–he doesn’t have a prayer of defeating the heavyweight champion. It seems to me that segregating athletes into classes of somewhat similar capabilities isn’t just done to divide the sexes, and that it’s absurd to argue that those who win against their peers in a particular sport are somehow subpar to those in other classes of the same sport.
No, if you want to convince me there’s something really wrong with the mind of a woman who chooses to spend her early years focused on competitive athletics, you’re not going to do it by throwing around statistics that tell me only that she’s slower, or weaker than, the best man in the same sport–someone with whom she’s not even trying to compete.
Yes. Made a similar point, and just saw your earlier comment.
Men and women should be viewed and treated as free individuals and that means they get to choose. A battle is being fought now over this idea because we have major influential forces denigrating individuals who are choosing traditional roles frequently supported by those who are considered politically conservative. This denigration is frequently coming from those in government and others with unchecked political influence over those in government. There may be some wrong behaviors here when government is involved.
Men and women also get to express their opinions freely and they may be criticized for those opinions. Nothing wrong with that.
I’m not a fan of weight classes, at least not at the highest levels. Of course, it is proper to use different categories at lower levels of competition, while people are still developing. Such classifications can be by weight or age.
About the boxers, I’m not sure if the middleweights are second-rate or third-rate. Obviously, if they would get the living daylights beaten out of them by the heavyweights, then they are not nearly as good. They may have been skilled, but boxing is about both skill and power and endurance.
I view it somewhat like a great free throw shooter in basketball. You could be the best in the world at shooting free throws, but still be a second-rate or third-rate player, if you lack the other skills.
But there are people who say that Venus/Serena Williams could beat top-ranked male tennis players.
See #6.
You are “not a fan of weight classes”? To me, it seems like, seeing your argument crushed, you’re doubling down. Who agrees with you? Anyone?
Also, among other facts that don’t care about anyone’s feelings, there are some Cold Equations. (Which is a great story, by the way.)
Any society that doesn’t perpetuate itself, is going to die out.
As has been mentioned before, only women can have children. And one of the simplest statistics of all is that to maintain a steady population – not to have some kind of feared “population bomb” or something, but just to keep things EVEN – each woman must have an average of about 2 children: to replace herself, and a man. Which means that any woman who doesn’t have two children, is in effect shifting that burden to other women.
It may not happen quickly, but if you don’t have women giving birth to an average of 2 children each, eventually you get to zero population.
And it doesn’t matter WHY they don’t have children, if they “choose” to put career first, or become an athlete, or whatever. If they concentrate on that, and don’t have children, or maybe have just one, ultimately you have collapse.
I’m reminded again of a comment post I saved from just over a year ago, I believe it was to one of the “Flagship” Ricochet Podcast “episodes.”
Pretty sure that persuasion isn’t the intent.
If your desire is to see The Best Boxer, Period, then you wouldn’t want weight classes. It’s really the same with other sports. If you want to see The Best Tennis Player, then they shouldn’t be divided by men/women either. Ultimately you probably end up never seeing any women at the top level, but if your answer is to divide them up, then again, you’re not really seeing The Best. (Although it’s probably reasonable to conclude that The Best tennis player will be whoever is the best MALE tennis player.) There can be entertainment value etc in having categories, but nobody should fool themselves beyond that.
So apparently the only value, entertainment or otherwise, that could possibly come from competitive sports, is to see, or to be, “the best”. Anything short of that is a waste of everyone’s time.
I don’t think that my argument is being crushed. Weight classes are weird. Why does someone get a gold medal, when everybody knows that there are a bunch of bigger guys who could stomp him?
If we’re interested in watching the pinnacle of human achievement, then let’s watch competitions that provide that, not slice the population into preferred classifications who get to compete only against themselves, who are not competitive with the very best, but nevertheless claim the glory of winning against an inferior set of opponents.
Again, I only apply these rules to the very highest level of competition. I have no objection to high schoolers competing against each other, and college kids competing against each other, and so on. Lesser levels of competition have different goals, including fun (which is a good thing) and facilitating development of the young (which is a good thing).
I agree, and this is one of the concerns lurking behind my criticism of women’s sports. I think that we have gone much too far in blurring the line between men and women, and that this has the severe negative consequences that you indicate on childbirth and family. Marriage too, I think.
I’d like to see us returning to a vision of Biblical manhood and Biblical womanhood. Both are admirable, but they are different.
Women’s sports (at the highest level) are also hypocritical in feminist terms. We’re not supposed to discriminate on the basis of sex, except when women can’t compete, in which case we have to discriminate on the basis of sex.
I don’t regard a genetic endowment, in Ali’s case being tall and weighing more than a middleweight, as being the pinnacle of human achievement. Tony Zale’s or Ray Robinson’s achievements in the ring were just as impressive to me. YMMV, and obviously does.
Then how about inventing some new sports where size/weight/etc don’t matter?
And how much does the #350 male player get paid for winning a match? Diddly.
Which reminds me of an episode of The Critic, where network-owner Duke Phillips congratulates movie critic Jay Sherman on the improvement of his show ratings by 50%, “from squat to squat-and-a-half.”
LOL. I am so old, I remember the days of Margaret Court, Bobby Riggs, and Billie-Jean King.
Frankly, I think that other than observing that it’s pretty unlikely that Venus or Serena could beat the top-ranked man, except perhaps once in a blue moon and on one of his off days (something I think there’s almost universal agreement for on this thread), I really don’t see what the fuss is about.
I’m quite happy to watch the best “woman” tennis player, as well as the best “man” tennis player, and my pleasure isn’t diminished by parsing their abilities and speculating on what would happen if they played each other. I don’t care if Serena would lose to Novak. She’s not playing him. And repeating over and over that–when I’m watching Serena I’m not watching the actual “best,” because the best will always be a man (Citius, Altius, Fortius!), is meaningless to me, not because I’m too dumb to understand, but because that’s not what I care about. If watching women’s sports isn’t your bag because they’re not as strong or fast as men, I think that’s fine. But other people may watch sports for other reasons.
Above all, I really don’t want a world where women aren’t competitive in any level of sport because they’re not as strong or as fast as the men. I see that world encroaching even today, even in high-school (so, not world-class athletes, just children engaged in extracurricular sports pursuits.) I don’t want the “girls swim team” with “biological girls” on it overtaken by faster and stronger, testosterone fueled men posing as women who, although they might be faster and stronger–and perhaps even “better,” don’t belong there. Once that idea becomes entrenched, then it’s sayonara, women’s sports, at any level. But perhaps that’s the point.
I was merely asking a question which to his credit he answered. When I asked the question I was unclear of what he was implying in his post. I wasn’t trying to bait him. I was asking for a clarification. Please don’t compare me to that witch. Thank You and God Bless.
One of the great debates in boxing is who’s the best pound for pound boxer in the world. It’s often evident a middle weight boxer is more skilled than a heavy weight. The most skilled guys are normally middle weights like Sugar Ray Leonard and Floyd Mayweather.
I guess that sports, from a financial perspective, is essentially entertainment. If this is entertaining to you, go ahead.
I’m not really interested in who is the best boxer, “pound for pound,” any more than I’m interested in who is the best basketball player, “inch for inch.” The pounds and the inches are part of the athlete’s endowment, and I’m generally interested in watching the best.
I still like women better. Besides, if they were faster than men, we’d never catch them. Now that would be an existential threat to the human race.
Bravo!
Nice one, but you better duck before the feminists see it.
(i.e., having to “catch” women implying an endorsement of rape, etc.)