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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 this in my business a lot. A lot of the woman operate as they think they are supposed to — as a man would — and they are very difficult to work with. Those that are truer to themselves and just get on with the job, tend to do very well in my opinion. Most of us don’t care if we are working with a man or a woman, we want to work with someone capable.
Competing with others pushes us to excel, everyone benefits from competing. Whether or not you can sell tickets to it is another question.
I’m just here to “speak truth to power” (yawn):
(Seen at Kohl’s today)
I don’t understand “seeding” or qualifying rounds or whether you have to be a highly ranked player to even get a chance to play at one of the major tournaments, but if you win first prize, I’m pretty sure they won’t pay you a smaller sum of money than they would have payed the number one seed if he had won.
But I think the point is that the #350 male player never wins first prize. At least not playing against the higher-ranking men. Although he might beat the #1 female player, but – basically – so would all the other male players ranked above him. Venus and Serena Williams, therefore, are only paid the money they get paid, because they aren’t competing against men. If they were playing against men, and lost to the #350 ranked male player, they would get paid what the #351 male player gets: basically, bupkis.
Splendid post and comments.
Funny that this discussion was triggered by Biles withdrawal. I don’t think there’s a man alive who could beat Biles at her events. He’d have to be on the small side. Jockeys might be too big. Most of the best ladies gymnasts are over at about age 20. And they’ve been prepping for this since they started to walk. It might be the only athletic competition where a woman will always be the world champ.
She owes nobody anything, she brought home the hardware for her country for her career. I don’t think she’s a hero, but she gets credit for honesty. She could have just said she pulled a hamstring or pulled a core muscle and withdrawn.
Gossamer Cat, you touched on an interesting area, bringing up ladies gymnastics and figure skating. No offense, but those sports appeal to the ladies in a way that bewilders us troglodytes.
I’m not clear on whether they can be a sport when the results are strictly determined by judges. There are very unfortunate looking guys at the pinnacle of football, baseball, basketball and hockey. But figure skaters, gymnasts and divers always seem like way better-than-average looking people. Makes me a little suspicious.
I’ve been doing stitch fix and girl power shirts have a strict NO on them.
I feel like there’s an unspoken/unknown premise buried in this discussion…
Sports are entertainment, but they served a valuable purpose in training up and identifying your best warriors. Weight class is a bit odd for that. So is competitive women’s sports.
We are, as a society, so far removed from anything necessary for survival that everything that was based in there has turned into self glorification and narcissism.
Perhaps we can persist like this for a long time, but don’t think it can’t go back. And I know some here have absolutely no future time orientation, but we should be leaving behind structures that can support future generations, not leave them without foundations to face difficulties our hedonism will eventually lead to.
So fine, women compete in sports for their own glory. But let’s not fool ourselves that their athletic prowess has any more value to society than service to their egos and our entertainment.
There was an old saying in the corporate world: The road to the corner office goes through the locker room. What a man learned there translated to leadership in the business world. Women were said to lack that experience and suffered accordingly. Sports and competition for women may help them learn to be leaders in the same way that sports were said to help men.
If my desire is to see the “best” — most skilled or with the most heart — boxer, then I do want weight (and sex) classes. It’s what an athlete does with his or her “equipment” that makes a champion.
There are fans of the sport of boxing. There are fans of specific boxers. Fans of the sport want to see what a participant has to offer in the way of talent and dedication, not the results of an accident of genetics.
The old saying is, “He chases her, until she catches him.”
I don’t find that as valuable as the rest of you do.
I am with Jerry that motherhood should be far more elevated for women than Olympic medals, college sports scholarships and corporate board rooms.
I’m old fashioned like that. Always have been, always will be. It makes logical sense, it is consistent with my worldview, and it is how you conserve civilization.
“Weight classes are weird.” I ask again, who agrees with you?
My point is, these are idiosyncratic opinions that you happen to have, and which almost no one shares.
For example, most people see a blind or mentally handicapped athlete who triumphs over his limitations as a “pinnacle of human achievement”.
But blaming athletics is barking up the wrong tree. Just take a look at the ages of the women who are competing at the Olympics. Most women athletes retire from their sport with decades-worth of potential childbearing years ahead of them.
On the other hand, the pursuit of the corner office can easily monopolize a woman’s time for decades.
Do what you are called to do. If you want to make it to the board room, go for it. Team sports may help you to make it. If you want to be a mother and raise good children, go for it. I do agree that those whose calling is to be good mothers of many children are unappreciated today. There used to be a poster of a woman with the thought bubble over her head saying, “I can’t believe I forgot to have children.”
That also depends on how much damage they do to their body along the way.
Many of these female athletes become engaged in the training, pushed by parents in some cases, well before they could possibly have any understanding of the physical implications for childbearing.
It is true that the two Olympic sports where audiences prefer the female version, figure skating and gymnastics, are dominated by teenagers, especially gymnastics. I don’t know of any male sports where a 15 year old reliably beats a 20 year old, but perhaps there are. But male sports are typically built around strength, while female sports are built around agility, flexibility and aesthetics. Many have noted that in the past, female gymnasts looked like regular women and we enjoyed the sport just as much at the time. As much as I enjoy female gymnastics, I wouldn’t mind if it disappeared or, at least imposes minimum weight limits that are consistent with reproductive health.
Agree. The lengths to which young women engaged in pursuits of such physical perfection (and accolades and money) will go to control their bodies, sometimes in unhealthy ways, are alarming. The same is true for ballerinas. I do think that more attention is being paid to the issue today, at least in the US, where you no longer see nearly as many waiflike girls flinging themselves through the air, and at least to the eye, the young women appear more robust. (I do wonder, sometimes: where are the parents of these young women, when I hear one or another horror story about abuse, or about physical or mental health issues.)
But then, just so you know, I think a lot of the stuff that “normal” non-athletic women do to their bodies for the purpose of attracting attention to themselves are rather alarming (although perhaps not to the same extent), as well.
My 16 year old daughter enjoys weight training. Probably not really womanly, but I’m going to encourage her to continue anyway.
Women’s Tennis is more enjoyable to watch because there has been less of the pile drive serves.
Tennis should have make the men stick to wooden rackets.
It’s a free choice as long as it’s an informed choice, which includes knowing about possible – even likely, in many cases – long-term health risks. And no illusions about “Well, that couldn’t happen to ME!”
Well that’s just stupid, Charlotte. If you can’t set a world record in weight lifting (for either sex) you are wasting your time. Then again, most of us who enjoy writing on Ricochet are not among the very best writers in the whole world, so I guess we’re all wasting our time pretending to be something we were never meant to be.
Fortunately the East German Women’s Olympic Squad was disbanded a while back. Otherwise, musculoskeletal problems are unlikely to be relevant.
Also, being a female Olympic athlete is a good way to meet male Olympic athletes. Let’s remember that one of the functions of the original Games was to let unmarried women look over the available, um, goods.
Today, in a society in which rewards are increasingly expected to be handed out according to group membership, sports remain as a lonely oasis of objectivity and meritocracy.
Naw, that doesn’t work. Did she ever claim to be competing for money/prizes/medals/whatever?
I like women’s tennis , but I have to turn the sound off because the grunting drives me up the wall.
That is not warranted. That is not what he is talking about. If you think that sarcasm is warranted, you have missed his point.
This is about his preference. But apparently, his preference for what he wants to watch is offensive to many here at Ricochet.
I always fail to understand why someone’s preference is such a problem for others.
I don’t like Chocolate. That really should have no bearing whatsoever on you, even if you love love love chocolate. It is not some sort of judgment on your love of chocolate – it is a statement that I don’t like it.
I find that even here, even among conservatives, that people react strongly when someone states a preference with which they do not agree.
Yes, it’s that, but it’s also his use of intentionally insulting terms like third-rate, unwomanly, etc. If Jerry had written a post saying, “I prefer watching men’s sports because the level of play is generally higher and that’s what’s important to me” I don’t think anyone would have batted an eye.
Why does anyone care?
I couldn’t beat any of the women much less the men at any of these competitions. I don’t really care what somebody else says about them. Men are stronger than women. Men run faster than women then perform almost any physical activity better than women. It is simply not insulting to women to say that it is simply the truth. If you are rating people in terms of absolute achievemen then women are not 1st tier.
Why is it offensive to say so?