London and Boston Marathons to include non-binary category for 2023 races

[DillonPanthersTexas]

Why do I feel that this new non binary category will just end up as a second tier men's category? Why would a female athlete bother with entering?

Guardian Link

No issue with this at all, as it's only for the mass start so won't affect any "winning." If this was the elite, championship or GFA places then there would, quite rightly, be a furore.
In my view people can identify however they like if they're in the race as fun runners only.

This is at least a third space. So long as the women's category is for biological women only I'm fine, and all those NB ladies can feel gratified and oh so inclusive for being outrun by males being their authentic selves. Maybe they'll be some realisation there of the need for classification of sport by sex.

I'm a runner. If this new category will have GFA qualifying standards then possible negative consequences are:

• making it easier for a larger number of males than female to automatically qualify through the Good For Age system, because it's essentially adding a category for men to qualify in. Although, I should say that currently the women's qualifying standards are significantly softer than the men's for equivalent age, to try and even out the number of people qualifying in each category.
• if there will continue to be 6000 GFA places available across all three categories this is likely to reduce the number of women who can qualify overall, as both the male and NB categories would in practice be dominated by men. (Say 2750 men, 500 NB places (men), 2750 women) where currently it is 3000 men/3000 women.
• London like Boston now applies a cushion to the GFA times as there are more people qualifying than places available. If very many people (men) qualify in the NB category this could have the impact of increasing the cushion for everyone and thereby making it harder for women to qualify in their own category. Although not sure if the allocations are ringfenced, to recognise the fact that the men's qualifying standard is already quite difficult and being asked to run 2.55 is a tougher ask compared to running 3:40, even when you account for performance differences.

London is a really difficult race to get into through the ballot and people qualifying through GFA have put real effort into meeting those standards. I don't think this new category should have qualifying times or be a route in through GFA- don't really care if it affects how things are listed in the results but it should not be used as an easier route into a race that very very many runners want to do.

I don't think this new category should have qualifying times or be a route in through GFA

Absolutely agree. As someone who has worked extremely hard over several years to meet GFA standard, I know how tough it is - especially when you meet the cut off but aren't enough under it to "count" and actually get a place.
GFA for this category would likely just mean double the number of men qualifying.

I hope this means the woman’s race will only have biological females running in it. Otherwise it’s three categories that biological males can win rather than the current two. The current situation is very discouraging for young female athletes, hopefully this will improve things.

These new rules will negatively affect everyone who classifies themselves as their biological sex, as there are only so many places to go round. The more people qualify, the more the buffer increases. It's not clear from the article whether the new category applies to GfA qualification at London, but it does apply to Boston qualification (ie men could potentially qualify using the women's standards) therefore making it harder for everyone else to qualify.

I'm sure they've thought this through carefully and it won't disadvantage women.

/s