cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18302836
I'm just picturing that robot from Star Trek (the one thinking about "this sentence is false") going "huh" and then blowing up........
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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This doesn't work as out of a man and woman of the same weight the man will still be stronger on average. Women have a higher body fat percentage, and less muscle in their upper body simply because they have less testosterone. You would probably have to use testosterone as a way of categorizing people in sport. It sucks but there is no other fair way I can see.
There is no "fair". You can't have it. Tall people usually win in basketball. Narrow builds do better in marathons. People older for their age bracket (as kids) are more likely to enter the NHL (growing up they're bigger so they get more playing time). So yeah, whatever you do, most of us are starting with a big disadvantage at any sport, even if we put in the same effort our whole lives.
That's life. The question is how to make rules knowing all of that.
You are quite right. Some of the great swimmers for example have unusually long arms compared to their height. Competitive sports at the level we do it now can never be fair. It arguably shouldn't get nearly as much attention. I would argue that we should be pushing more people to do casual sports, rather than just sitting and watching spectator sports.
To add to the swimmer point, I was originally going to make a similar point based on the supposed fact that Michael Phelps has a genetic mutation that causes him to build up lactic acid at half the "normal" rate, effectively doubling his endurance.
I want to see an Olympics of average people. Just get Caryl from Accounting, Josh from Sales and Bill from Maintenance, Make it a 2 parter, with an initial games after 1 month of training (enough training to ensure they can at least compete in the event) and a bigger games after 6 months of training, and you could even do a fun event at 12 months with the next batch of randos to see how much they've progressed/regressed after spending 6 months intensively training.
Honestly I mostly want more people to know the kind of results you can get from just doing regular exercise, especially when you're starting at zero. I got on my bicycle for the first time in a decade 6 months ago and struggled to make it around the block. I'm now biking 5 miles a day, and in the longer term there's some really cool trail networks not far from me connecting cities as far as 100 miles away, so I see that as a possible end goal
I literally said it wasn't a perfect solution, just that it would solve these silly gender scandals. I stand by it.
It would solve one gender scandal. The next one would be people complaining that there are no women in sports anymore.
And then we'd circle back around and have to segregate the genders in sports to give women a chance to compete.
And then when a woman stands out in her field, they'd start accusing her again of being a man.
A little late, but I think I have a reasonable solution to the genderless weight class classification.
Measuring the hit force of athletes for sports like boxing could work. Not sure how viable that is in real world applications, with human nature and all, but it seems reasonable to me. If the issue is men on average hit harder than women of similar builds, why not just classify by hit force instead?
Even with the same muscle mass, it appears men might be stronger in the upper body compared to women ("A Comparison between Male and Female Athletes in Relative Strength and Power Performances", Sandro Bartolomei, et al. ) so I'm not sure checking for any one single variable would make things fair.