Trans woman’s victory in female snooker sparks fairness row (Times, 2 Sep)

[BettyFilous]

Another day, another mediocre male taking a woman’s prize in women’s sport.

A transgender snooker player’s victory in a women’s competition has triggered fresh debate about fairness in sport.

Jamie Hunter, 25, became the first transgender woman to win a women’s ranking tournament on Sunday by beating Rebecca Kenna 4-1 at the US Women’s Open in Seattle.

snip

Hunter, 25, from Wigan, Greater Manchester, responded: “If Maria is upset, it is disheartening and saddening, but I’m there to help grow [the sport] not ruin it. I want the tour to prosper. 🙄

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/6c08649c-29ea-11ed-a830-74a6c8fbb722?shareToken=b718d32e7db506e5bf707834f039c760

Rebecca - congratulations on your win! Sorry to hear you were cheated out of your prize money.

in terms of ageing, i would think that most really good snooker players (there's been at least one well known counter-example of course) have very, very acute eyesight, of the type that almost no middle-aged people have. success and failure in the sport turns on differences of micrometers.

The one candidate of a possible female advantage is in very long distance swimming events because of the higher percentage of body fat in women's bodies. But that is not really a very common event (like swimming across the Channel). Some have argued that endurance events might be another such candidate, though evidence is still lacking..

What's interesting to contemplate, though, is what kinds of sport events we would have if more of them had been created explicitly for women's bodies. Rhythmic gymnastics may be one of those, because it places a premium of greater flexibility. But in general I would think that we can't quite imagine what sports would look like had they developed less based on boys and men being their focus group.

A trivial example of that would be the height of the snooker table which might favour taller players and men, on average, are taller with longer arms etc.

Transmen (FtM) taking T are banned from Women’s (female) events because <drum roll> that would be doping.

Transmen can compete in male events with a TUE for T.

But I think you actually mean it’s MtF that have been banned (quite rightly) by FINA.

Ronnie is a genius though. Upthread someone said Mark Williams didn't do tons of practice.

Re ageing @Walkden in this year's World's the dominating players were all pushing 50, even against all the super obsessively practicing young Asian players (snooker is massive in China) so yes, ageing isn't always a problem.

One of the reasons I like snooker is that this can happen, older unfit players can still dominate, and be short and tall, there's plenty of different characters. But the commonality is, they are all men. I think Jason Ferguson is missing this piece of the puzzle and I would love to definitively see why it's men who dominate.

As a pp said, you'd have expected a tenacious woman to have broken through and made a mark by now on the main tour. All sports professionals are competitive obsessives, male or female.