TW selected for angling team leads to half the team quitting the squad.

[Justme56]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12181413/Half-England-ladies-angling-team-quit-trans-woman-selected-join-squad.html

Looking at the figures, I wonder if it should be split by sex after all.

Yes. It would be interesting to know what the riders think.

That's really interesting re equestrian sports. Strength must play a role, but I always wondered if women compensated by being able to get more out of a horse (i.e. being better communicators). Women certainly do better these days in dressage (the top 7 ranked riders are all female) where strength probably plays less of role.

Your confusion will be miraculously resolved upon reading the article.

I’m not sure strength is that important. Stamina yes but the strongest man ain’t ever going to win a strength competition with a horse.

I think boys give up if they aren’t very good but girls are happy to hang around the ponies. (I appreciate that is dreadful stereotyping)

This disgusting male pseudo-feminist is repeating the line that competitive angling is physically easy. https://twitter.com/TakedownMRAs/status/1667831682345635846?t=mHSboQrF5cMuJlJ-gPt2RA&s=19 thread. That's how TRAs are spinning this.

Not an angler myself but have been involved in it almost all my life and now work in a closely related field.

It's hugely dominated by men, as a pp said. I'd guess that 90 of those men would be in agreement with us.

The problem with the kind of man who's into fishing (across the board - coarse, shore, fly-fishing) is that, in common with much of the population, they are behind on this, it hasn't affected them. Unless they have a wife, daughter, sister, mother, or female colleague or fishing pal who has opened their eyes to this they just aren't aware of it. I'm often amazed at how little otherwise intelligent, interested men who care a great deal about other people, including women, know or even care about this.

A great thing about fishing is that taken as a whole (coarse, fly-fishing etc) it includes people (although mostly men) of all ages, across class divides and political divides. Just typing that I'm sure the same could be said of football, rugby and more.
I wonder if there's something to harness there - as previous poster said, there's freedom in not being attached to powerful sponsors.

"Is there a difference between female and male horses in terms of racing speed?"

Yes, so in recognition of this filles and mares carry 3lb less (in non handicap races) than male horses in Flat races and 7lb less in hurdle and steeplechase races. 3lb sounds like nothing but definitely makes a difference. Geldings- ie castrated males - carry the same weight as uncastrated males.

Plus boys/men are known to be risk-takers. I always think the first person to get on a wild horse must have been a teenage boy!

I feel very proud of these women for making this stand.

I do wonder how this will all play out in the long run. Will we end up with a lot of men that want to identify as women flocking to an increasingly small number of sports that will let them cheat against the women until we have one sport where they are the only ones left competing.

Your point is valid, but the majority of men are not disadvantaging women in this way, for all sorts of reasons, such as a lack of sporting talent or some ability to empathise with women. Similarly, not all women are behaving as admirably as these ones. Sporting bodies should not permit men to take advantage in this way, just as they should not permit them to gain a competitive advantage via drugs.

Have you ever been fishing? The strength needed to land a big fish is high.

I dunno, garden gnomes don't look all that burly.

Err if you upscaled a garden gnome, he would make Eddie Hall look like Mo Farah. They are yoked

You don't need to win flat out - you just need to be strong enough to check and guide the horse around a showjumping course. Minuscule differences when steering a powerful show jumper around a jump-off when every fraction of a second counts would make a crucial difference. There's also core strength - being able to balance the horse and help it make turns etc.

Gender has nothing to do with anything.
Sex now, well most sports are sex segregated. Apparently including this type of fishing which needs strength as one attribute.

And if you read the article you would realise why its sex segregated.

Am sure non binaries and demi boi romantics etc can also join, as the sex they are.
If they want to have special classes for trans people they need to start asking, or setting up their own sports bodies.

MandyMotherOfBrian · Today 08:33

Well that really is stunning and brave! It’s one thing, as a woman, to maybe give up your sport or make a stand because you’re having to compete against men but it’s really quite something to have the strength of character and common decency to do it when actually the advantage would have been yours but your sense of fairness and sportsmanship regarding your opponent is the driving factor behind your decision. Very sad for them that it comes to this, but what strong women they are.

It's terrible that they feel that they've had to take this stand and I don't think that we can understand the significance of their principle action. They didn't want to be involved in cheating other women out of a chance to win. It's excellent that it has been covered by a large circulation newspaper, even if some readers don't go through the entire article and discover why there's a male advantage.

It's all sunlight and with luck, could embolden more women.

Well done to these ladies.

I will have a drink on these three women's health and good fortunes this evening.

I wonder about that - I am reading that ancient horses were very small compared to modern horses, and were originally hunted for food, then domesticated around 6,000 years ago and additionally used as dray or pack animals. A bit like reindeer, I'm guessing. They were probably bred for different tasks very early on, like wolves/dogs were. (Dogs might have helped humans hunt the horses, I suppose.) So I would think that by the time we started riding horses, we had already domesticated them and whoever first tried to ride one was not mounting a truly wild horse.

My fanciful imagination about domestication put forward a Disney-esque scenario in which a girl (I'm imagining Jennifer Lawrence in Hunger Games in the role) shoots a mare with her bow and arrow and discovers an orphaned foal. Overcome with guilt, she takes the foal back to the camp (sending other members of her clan to fetch the mare carcass).
She protects the foal from other family members who want to slaughter it for food - she even keeps the dogs away - and she makes a friend of it. Over time and through heroically saving her life and the clan via some horse instinct or other, the foal (now a filly) becomes a mascot for the clan - they change their name and include the horse in their mushroom-fuelled shamanistic rituals. Every so often, the young woman and the mare go off alone into the semi-arid plains/forest (depending on what the climate was like in the area 6,000 years ago) to commune with the horse spirits and bond. When the horse eventually dies, the woman (as she will be by then) becomes first "mare" of her tribe and top shaman and oracle. Etc.

I may have to name change after this.

I like your style.

@BellaAmorosa can I recommend the Jean Auel, Clan of the Cave Bear books to you? Something not dissimilar happens in the second book.

@IWilloBeACervix
I keep meaning to read that series because I love the genre, thanks.

Showjumping is the most male dominated of the Olympic equestrian disciplines.

In Eventing we currently have a female world champion, a female European champion, a female Olympic gold medalist and a woman won all of the legs of the grand slam (Burghley, Badminton and Kentucky). The European team gold medalists were an all female team.

underestimate - not understand.

Well done to those women. Stunning and brave.

Huge respect for these women.