Laurel Hubbard to go to Tokyo

[Biscuitsanddoombar]

Not a surprise and hopefully it’ll open some eyes about the utter ridiculousness of allowing someone who is male to compete against women in weightlifting

www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/may/05/trans-weightlifter-laurel-hubbard-set-to-make-history-at-tokyo-olympics

The rules for Semenya have (roughly) ended up the same as for transgender males - lowered testosterone is required.

Semenya has been challenging the need to lower testosterone.

@adrianmolesmole

Is it just me or does it seem unfair that poor caster semenya has to go through endless humiliating treatment, yet some transgender woman can get through and play on the women's team? Haven't rtft so correct me if I've got it wrong..

From a strictly physiological pov, they're basically the same situation. CS's body responds to testosterone in the same way as Laurel's.

But you betcha that tras have used the circumstances of intersex athletes as a wedge issue.

If CS succeeds in overturning the ruling that she should suppress her natural levels of testosterone then trans athletes will demand the same.

Caster Semenya is biologically male and has a disorder of sexual differentiation leading to appearing externally female at birth. It must be a horrible situation to grow up thinking you’re a girl and then, when you don’t develop normally for a girl at puberty, to discover as an older teen or young adult that you’re actually male. Semenya does get the benefit of testosterone’s effects in enhancing athletic performance and therefore should not be competing in the female category in my opinion. The sad thing is the huge number of women who have been displaced from medals and places in competitions by Semenya. The rules need to change to ensure fairness for women, and keep women’s competitions for females only. The sports governing bodies need to find a way for trans athletes and those with DSDs that give them an advantage to compete fairly in other categories.

GonadTheGaul

This year, Semenya won the South African 5000m event and is currently trying to set a qualifying time for the Tokyo Olympics. This is pretty much what I predicted would happen when the authorities simply stopped Semenya competing at the shorter events.
It is wrong, everyone knows it is wrong, but I really don't know how we can get this to change.

So can a female competitor identifying as a trans women and inject herself with testosterone to increase levels but to just below the cut off allowed for men?

Though surely if TWAW they have to abide by female levels? Talk about having your cake and eating it!

It looks like it’s been confirmed they will compete in the women’s 87kg category.

www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/sportsnews/article-9707053/Olympics-Transgender-weightlifter-Laurel-Hubbard-selected-New-Zealands-team.html

It looks like a Tongan woman called Kuinini Manumua is the woman to miss out, will not get to call herself an Olympian:

mobile.twitter.com/mar_vickers/status/1406769907258335234

Shame on all those involved.

Just looked, Tonga has only had a total of 43 Olympians EVER. How special would it have been if Manumua had been one too?

‘Poor caster semenya’, I don’t think so. Has known they are a male for a long time, lives ‘as a man’ the rest of the time - google wedding pictures. I’m sure the initial shock of discovering that you have a dsd is awful but - life can be tough. Has benefited financially from competing in women’s sports having gone through male puberty.

It looks like a Tongan woman called Kuinini Manumua is the woman to miss out, will not get to call herself an Olympian:

That poor woman. I am so angry.

Victory for inclusion? What a f#%%% joke.

I saw this morning. It is ridiculous

Just read the new bbc article about it www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-57549653

It’s interesting they pit it as inclusion versus fairness. Surely fairness is what it should be about? Inclusion in sports like this makes no sense especially with the male and female categories. I don’t get to include myself in the Paralympics because it’d be more inclusive to have someone outside the original eligibility criteria.

@NotBadConsidering

Just looked, Tonga has only had a total of 43 Olympians EVER. How special would it have been if Manumua had been one too?

For fucks sake.

Laurel Hubbard is, among other things that you wouldn’t normally expect to be compatible with competing in the women’s lifting event forty-three years old.

Something not seem a bit off about such late in life success?

Kuinini, Charisma, and all the other women losing out RIGHT NOW, I am so sorry. I stand with you. I wanted to see YOU lift. I have no interest whatsoever in Hubbard’s results, which are of no interest to women’s lifting.

When it comes to inclusion and fairness, fairness must trump inclusion.

Here’s the unflappable Ross Tucker explaining why:

twitter.com/Scienceofsport/status/1277522426398674944

Something not seem a bit off about such late in life success?

It's more than a "bit off". Emma Hilton plotted Hubbard's performance compared to others in the same age category here:

twitter.com/FondOfBeetles/status/1399432823048708097?s=20

Hubbard leaps off the top of the top-level female performance by miles, to land somewhere in the middle of the top-level male performance for that age.

So Hubbard is far, far better than any woman of the same age, and is just about still competitive at Olympic level where higher-performing young women compete.

New Zealand Olympic boss comments are basically mealy mouthed word salad chucking in some Maori words but quite clearly saying ‘the IOC set the rules so this on them’

www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/jun/21/olympics-tokyo-laurel-hubbard-trans-weightlifter-new-zealand

Another thing to note on Hilton's graph. That's a complete Y axis starting from zero. This isn't one of of those charts where it's zoomed in to show small differences.

Hubbard really is lifting twice as much as many of the women competing, and 77% more than the nearest female competitor.

(Sorry, another correction - 77% was Hubbard's winning margin in the competition setting the 280kg record. It's "only" around 45-50% better than the best female performance in the entire 10-year period shown in the graph).

Sport is about physical strength, stamina, speed and agility. Biological sex matters. It's ridiculous to categorise athletes based on 'gender identity'.

It astonishes me that anyone could support this.

This is from a website that provides tables of male and female weightlifting performance, according to age and experience.

The headings are Beginner, Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, and Elite.

I have switched on bodyweight ratios for easy comparison, and picked the deadlift as the exercise.

Look at the 95kg category, and how much of their bodyweight an elite male lifter could expect to lift: 280%. For women, the figure is a mere 192%.

How is this situation fair?

I'm sure pp have said this but Hubbard is going to peak the world. The women pushed out of the way for this are heroes.

Thanks, Purgatory. Those numbers correspond with Emma's table.

As Ross Tucker noted - there is no overlap in male and female performance in those 10 years of age 35+ events. The lowest male result is higher than the best male result.

Even if the best female could have qualified for a male event, she would have come last every time.

Prediction: Hubbard will pull out at the very last minute for some bullshit pretend sport injury reason so that this doesn't get tested but no actual NZ woman gets to replace her because the team has been selected. The TRAs will claim a victory.

There just isn't going to be any overlap between elite males and elite females. The difference for the 95kg category are even starker at the other end, for novices. 95kg Female Novice - 59% of her bodyweight. 95kg Male Novice - 110% of his bodyweight.

Our awkward issue here is that I don't think Hubbard is elite in their biological sex category, which obscures their advantage.