World Athletics

And that eventually impacts on elite sport, as there is a smaller pool / pipeline of women available to rise to elite level.

Hence an impact on international competitions and medals.

Having his balls on the inside probably makes it easier to run, no need to wear tight pants to stop them bouncing all over the place and more aerodynamic (although Linford Christie didn't seem to have an issue😉)

Sex does kind of matter in horse events, though I'm not entirely sure why - men are vastly overrepresented at elite competition compared to the proportions of men and women who are leisure riders. I usually assume this is because horse-riding is a dangerous sport, and the faster you go and the higher you jump the greater the risk, and men are known to take more risks than women (so not a physical difference but a mental one, and women self-select out of this type of competition). But I could be wrong.

This is equally as important.
In any competitive sport (barring the few where sex really doesn't make a difference - usually because they're on a horse), at any level, not just professional, there needs to be opportunities for women to compete against women. Where this doesn't happen the participation of women slowly declines.

@puffyisgood
Exactly. The clue is in the name, isn't it? Male athletic performance advantage. Advantages which no woman can acquire. What with being female and everything.

Phelps used to win races by fractions of 1%. The smallest difference between male and female achievement in any sport is about 10%. All his records have been bettered now anyway.

Maybe they want us to go full-on Harrison Bergeron?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron

the Phelps comparisons are utterly dismal.

(1) if there had been an Olympic swimming category for double jointed people with unusually large wingspans and hands/feet, then, yes, Phelps should have been in that category, shouldn't have been allowed to identify his way out of it.

(2) but such a category would have made no sense. far too few people in it and too obscure/too obviously penalising desirable physical qualities which are inheritable (ie which can be passed on to both sons and daughters). huge contrast with the male/female categories, which, outside of a minuscule number of edge cases, works exceptionally well

as hinted by an earlier poster I think the analogy is mostly an example of extreme wishful thinking, spread by TRA's who would dearly love to think of their own silly cock and balls (a genetic feature shared with a mere 51% of all the many billions of human births that the world has seen) as a 'superpower' on a par with those gifted to Phelps and his ilk.

Does that horse win a prize for being the smallest in a pursed race? That man is HUGE!

*just kidding 😉

Rather bizarrely, there are some tall jockeys. Bruce Hobbs was both the youngest and tallest to win the Grand National in 1925. He was over 6' 1": https://archive.ph/YBDZh

It seems that Danish female jockey Louise Moeller was also over 6ft tall and won over 70 races. https://www.casino.org/blog/top-10-tallest-jockeys/

Hoorah.

If people really wanted to do it, competitive sport could be made more inclusive by starting up, for example, a basketball league for men under 6ft or horse races for jockeys over 6ft, but there is never going to be a way to create a category where it is fair for men to compete against women.

The Michael Phelps argument is only ever adopted by the sporting version of whiny, malicious incels: 'Well, I wasn't born with the body for the sporting career of my dreams so why shouldn't those privileged bitches have their dreams crushed, too?' It's all about comparing their averageness to elite male sports stars and never about comparing elite male sports stars to each other.

In fact where a certain variation is advantageous separate categories are sometimes formed e.g. weight categories in martial arts. Lots of variations are an advantage in a specific sport or group of sports but can be a hinderance in others. Phelps has a body type that makes him an amazing swimmer but won't make him a fantastic marathon runner. The best female swimmers will also probably be taller than average, have long wingspans and larger than average hands/feet (for avoidance of doubt I mean female averages). The advantage of a male body over a female body applies to almost all sports even when it isn't obvious - e.g. shooting males still have an advantage (thanks to a slower heart beat). Just about the only place where the average male body wouldn't be advantageous over the average female body is disciplines such as the balance beam in gymnastics - which is why male and female gymnastics disciplines are different. Phelps isn't a gottacha. Usain Bolt isn't a gottacha (in fact Bolt is almost the opposite - height isn't generally considered an advantage in sprinters). Male bodies are not female bodies they differ in hundreds of ways many of which are not impacted by lowering testosterone after puberty.

I’m fed-up hearing the Michael Phelps argument.

The point is there is not a category to protect short armed people in sport or whatever aspect of him is chosen. If you want to campaign for one go for it but we currently only separate sport into two categories for very good reasons not on height, weight, arm span etc etc.

Since when has being male been" a freak of nature" ?

People have biological advantages in sports.

The thing with women's sports, is that it exists specifically to exclude certain kinds of biological advantages.

Some 13 year old will be freaky big and have an advantage on their sports team. That doesn't mean you let adults play sports against children's teams!

The Emma Hilton thread is perfect.And to finish it off perfectly is a link to a Bragg comment that he made while bending over and speaking through his arse.

The Phelps Gambit, as it’s known.

Emma Hilton did a good summary of it:

https://twitter.com/fondofbeetles/status/1374331296143581186?s=46&t=fMjCB4vFfh_N6mYE72mhHw

It's interesting to note whose biological differences are praised as superhuman and whose are castigated as freaks of nature. I hope Michael Phelps has a whole floor in his house dedicated to his trophies and medals.

Ha! But bet it gets deleted. Reddit is committed to silencing debate on this.

Saw this on Reddit today, an amusing analogy

https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/121v5in/bicyclist_ftw/

Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland - Oh, and Canada.
Falling over themselves to be wokey pokey and sooooo inclusvie - look what a lovey country we are our friendly people are sooo kind.
In fact I think NZ and Canada have a poor native residents record, Ireland has only just moved into the 21st C after years following Catholic patriarchal rules. And Scotland - sooo inclusive --- unless you're English and if you support the wrong team in the wrong place, watch your back.

Joanna Harper has been studying the impact of transition on TW’s performance. If I was to make a guess as to why 3/4 of Harper’s study participants dropped out, I would wager the early results were not supporting Harper’s hypothesis. Harper knows the game is up and is slowly reverse ferreting.

Joanna Harper sounds a bit terfy.

Asked about Lord Coe saying the overarching principle is protecting the female category in sport, she agrees before going on to waffle about how trans women haven't dominated any of their sports, so what are you all worrying about.

She surely should have said 'trans women are women so they are automatically included in the female category irrespective of testosterone levels, and how dare you imply that anyone would ever lie to gain a competitive advantage, they just want to be their true authentic selves'?

*supposedly

I said "classed as male" as in their DSD is one that affects males only. The medical classification, not the athletic category.
The fact that the Barr bodies testing identified CAIS athletes was one of the excuses used to ditch it. This was supposed evidence of its unreliability!