Parkrun to remove course records

Very interesting watching this blow up on social media and running groups. I’m really hoping the backlash makes parkrun HQ reconsider just how important those stats (and fairness) are to people, even to people who will never beat them!

I am secretly glad that they’ve they pissed off the men who care about stats too.

I haven't read the rest of this thread but the only way this can be resolved is for all participants to be honest when they self-declare their age and sex. parkrun doesn't and realistically can't check, so there has to be a return to a consensus that for sport sex is what matters, not gender, and anybody deliberately misstating their sex is cheating, just as they would be if they misstated their age. They should ask for sex, not gender, when people register, and only offer the options M, F or Prefer not to to say. Anybody in that latter category gets excluded from the M and F results. All of which will only work if the vast, vast majority of the population find their spines and start saying out loud that transwomen have no place in women's sport, at any level.

Just seen this posted on a running group I'm in

https://www.change.org/p/reinstate-statistics-on-parkrun-for-all-participants

Yes, but what I mean is that you lose the overall picture. My parkrun is a smaller one and it's not so obvious on some days. I think one week we we're on a 1:1 ratio male to female for the first 20 finishers. Obviously that's not the norm and of course you can usually see it but the power of the larger data set collated over time is lost.

I'm annoyed that they've hidden the age catagory lists in particular, they were clearly going to keep them but the clickable link on age categories is now gone too.

I think the only person who can reasonably ask (not tell) the photographer to delete the photos of Mara is Mara herself.

The park is a public space.

I was at cannon hill last week and I’m the person who took the photo of the photographer taking a picture of Mara.
pictures of 1st male finisher. None of 1st female because it was Mara wearing a Save Womens Sports top.
Photographer admitted he was told to delete photos.

You can see it in any individual results list. I was 5th lady at my local event last week, but about 50th overall.

As for Sophie Raworth, she's just not human with her speed!

Another article in the Telegraph's opinion section

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/02/10/parkrun-erase-women-than-admit-that-biology-rules/

https://archive.ph/R2yxv link avoiding paywall

I know this is a rhetorical question but I'd dearly love one of the organisations (Parkrun, M&S, the Body Shop, etc.) who are guilty of it to provide an honest and sensible answer

Why do organisations constantly seek to pander to a tiny minority rather than accommodating the majority who keep them afloat?

Of course, you only have to turn up at a park run and see who crosses the finish line first. One week I did a rough visual estimate - the first 20-30 finishers were all male. In the next 20 or so there were only a couple of women. About 2/3 of the field were men, 1/3 women (I took that part from the web results, rather than counting 300 people!).

The comments in response to this are worth a read. She's putting a lot of people off with her speed

Another thought.

By removing the records lists, parkrun also remove evidence that men are faster than women. Which is convenient. The female record at my local was around 4 or 5 minutes slower than the male record. I can't check this anymore though, of course. I also can't go and re-count exactly how many women were in the "fastest 100"... I think it was about 7.

It does seem bizarre that Parkrun now positions itself as anti-race, anti-competitive and anti-running.

I suppose all good things come to an end.

I've seen a good point made this evening which I hadn't thought about - many early events (and indeed my home parkrun) were set up with the help of, and funding from, local running clubs.

Yet they seem happy to tell "runners" to go away.

Seen earlier, sums it up well!

Does anyone have a link to parkruns policy on political statements, protests etc? Because, yes, there are potential many t-shirts that qualify as political statements.

This is the tweet with the pic of the fb comment by the photographer https://x.com/marayamauchi/status/1754432964958568489?s=20

It is wonderfully satisfying to see Parkrun hoist by their own petard, by doubling down on the "It's not a competition" argument, when what they really meant is that "Only male competitors (of all gender identities) matter".

Oh my! What a tirade of abuse that was! 🤣

Apparently parkrun policy is to not promote political causes which is why they deleted the photos of the women... I hope no parkrun has ever published a photo of someone wearing a pride flag on any kind then.

And I'd question whether a protest over parkrun policy is "political" anyway.

@WomaninBoots iirc there was some back and forth earlier in the week over Mara’s Parkrun photo being deleted, including comments on the fb page from the photographer explaining he’d been asked to delete it.
You should be able to see the photos on the link to Mara’s tweet, and you can see people complaining about deleted photos underneath. We have receipts.
https://x.com/marayamauchi/status/1754437388338683999?s=20

On that note... I saw someone talking about a "tirade of attacks" (by women campaigners) on FB and X on the core team at Cannon Hill parkrun. I found only a handful on deleted posts on their FB page when I went to look, so curious about what a "tirade of attacks" might look like I googled "Cannon Hil parkrun attacks" to see if any forum posts with examples of such or anything cropped up anywhere.

Unfortunately the first two hits were about a woman getting stabbed while running alone in said park. Which rather illustrates the points about barriers to sports participation for women made by a previous poster!

It was on the BBC news last night (10 o'clock), and I was somewhat surprised

🎯

And, you know what they say…. men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them.

Sophie Raworth no less. I wonder if she might speculate on why there might be a dearth of women record holders who can speak up?

Unless, of course, Sophie is interested in women whose records were erased before this action, and for a different reason?

Now it affects men a BBC presenter is suddenly interested in the Parkrun situation 🙄
https://twitter.com/sharrond62/status/1755684355286962258

"Calm down dears" says parkrun HQ. It just gets better and better this. 😆