Thousands of non-elite women at the Great North Run got neither privacy nor fair competition

Publishing a leaderboard or any ranking is fundamentally discriminatory if there are no efforts made to ensure that correct categories for age, sex and disability status are honoured on the basis of facts rather than personal choice. It's discriminatory because without any such efforts, anyone who isn't a nondisabled male in the peak of his prime for physical fitness is automatically disadvantaged and gets less benefit, in terms or pride/satisfaction from the information published, than those who are in the most advantaged category. It is absolutely patriarchy in action that the people making the decisions are in that most-advantaged category and therefore don't see the problem and don't care who is getting that disadvantage.

If they can't or won't make any effort to ensure that categories are respected then no rankings should be published at all - just the name of the one human who ran fastest.

Because people want to see their names in the list.

Do you have any practical solution to stopping women swapping entries with a man or genetically testing every female applicant in a race with tens of thousands of female runners?

There is no point in fighting a battle that can't be won.

Tell that to Paula Radcliffe who peed by the roadside mid-marathon in front of a TV audience of literally millions.

My main point was your dismissal of non-elite women's times as inconsequential. Care to address that?

It makes a noticeable difference to the statistics if the category has much smaller numbers and the man is a clear outlier.

But the principle is just as important. It's accepted that men can spend days or years arguing over a referee's decision and committees can spend months deciding whether a particular bike wheel or shoe or rule change is fair. This doesn't just happen at an elite level, but in amateur sports clubs everywhere.

Why should women not also expect fairness? Why should women's sport be treated as an after thought? A concession? Why is it rude for a woman to be competitive?

I also don't see any practical way it can be stopped, with that number of runners.

This has already been explained. You can't stop everyone from cheating in a mass participation run. You can create the social expectation that they shouldn't cheat.

Why should women not also expect fairness? Why should women's sport be treated as an after thought? A concession? Why is it rude for a woman to be competitive?

I have not suggested any of those things.

Speaking as a runner who has done a lot of events I agree this one is unwinnable. You cannot test the chromosomes of thousands of female runners. The most the organisers can do is make a clear statement that they expect people to run in the correct category and anyone found to be not doing that may be excluded from the race . But it would be difficult to enforce.

I expect most of us like to see our names in the results and how we compare to others in our category. But honestly, even with chip timing there can be anomalies, it's never foolproof. And most of us are probably running against our own previous times rather than the other runners.

Why do they want to see their names on a list if they don't care about anyone else's times?

Do you have any practical solution to stopping women swapping entries with a man or genetically testing every female applicant in a race with tens of thousands of female runners?

Again, you can't stop everyone from cheating in a mass participation event, but you can set expectations and make the rules clear.

As an ex runner myself, I believe that the times run by anyone outside the elite category in a mass race are of no interest to anyone except the runner themselves and their connections.

Why would they be? Who cares who came eleventh if they don't know them?

Why did you even put "women's" in your question, it's not relevant?

That is exactly what you are doing when you suggest that mass participation events should not have a female sex category and that the category should simply refer to gender.

You might as well ask why there are priority seats on public transport. We set an expectation that people will do the right thing.

This has already been explained. You can't stop everyone from cheating in a mass participation run. You can create the social expectation that they shouldn't cheat.

This is it for me. Difficulty policing it is beside the point. It's normalising using women's races by male cheats to validate their self image. It's a double whammy, which appears entirely acceptable.

The issue is it's practically acceptable to cheat. Whether it's one or a thousand. Because it's only women.

What about if a percentage of the men were knowingly doping? Do people really imagine that those men who were pushed down the rankings wouldn't be kicking off an almighty fuss about how unfair it all is??

And more to the point, they would have such a tremendous support, that you can bet your life, 'something would be done'.

I have not suggested that mass participation events should not have a female category.

Many, many people care about this. You may not have met them, but they exist in large numbers. It's why event organisers publish and categorise rankings. You can look up your or your friend's individual result just by searching for their name.

If they are categorising according to identity rather than sex, then they don't have a female sex category.

So they had portaloos, urinals, and a third option where you can squat for a wee?

I'm confused at the issue? Maybe it would be fairer to swap the urinals for more of the gender neutral squat toilets, but other than that I can't see a big issue here. Of course there will be queues for portaloos at a big event 🤷‍♀️

I actually suspect that in this day and age many mass participation runners are taking banned substances, but we are stil clear that it is cheating, even though it would be hard to prevent.

You absolutely did - saying it doesn't matter to any one other than the women and it's hard to police so why bother is exactly that

Yes, it's the expectation that it's completely and utterly wrong, there is a stigma attached to it and people objecting to it would be backed to the hilt.

TIMs running in the women's category, appears completely acceptable though.

Also peeing in the women's peequal. Women, their races, and their facilities are openly and acceptably just to be used for the validation of men. And no one turns a hair.

But if they don't matter, why not just scrap the male and female categories at non-elite level?

Exactly.

it's this bloody disingenuous we have to have the categories so we can leverage them, but you know what, if you object, then suddenly they don't matter.

I was there, and men and women had exactly the same provision. What on earth are people complaining about? All portaloos are nasty, but they are equally nasty for both men and women. They are fully enclosed and private. The men’s and women’s urinals are great if you like that sort of thing, but not mandatory.

I agree that people should not be singing up under gender categories, but the organisers cannot police 64000 entrants. How would it work?

I was there, and men and women had exactly the same provision.

Which, pedantically, would not have provided equal provision because men and women have different needs.

I accept the point that it was valuable additional provision in a context where provision never meets everyone's needs.

No it is not and I did not say it was hard to police so why bother.

I said I can't see any practical way to police it so how can it be policed.

How do you think it can be policed with a run of that size where people trade their entries?

How do you think it can be policed with a run of that size where people trade their entries?

You could work out a way to stop people trading their entries.

It's not that it can't be policed, it's that the system isn't set up to do it, because it was run on trust.

Now the trust is broken.

Most non-elite sport isn't set up to do drug tests and mouth swabs.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't set an expectation of fairness.