So far because of political pressure we have lost from parkrun:
- Course records
Parkrun removed all course records from its website in 2024.
This included:
- Fastest male/female course times
- Age‑graded course records
- Age‑category course records
- “Top 500 fastest” lists
These were deleted after campaign groups argued that transgender inclusion made the records “unfair” or “invalid”.
- Age‑category rankings
Previously, you could see:
- Fastest times for each age group (e.g., VW45–49, JM10)
- Where your time ranked nationally or globally
These tables were removed entirely.
This was directly linked to pressure from groups claiming that self‑identified gender categories distorted female rankings.
- Historical athlete comparisons
Parkrun used to show:
- How your time compared with others at your event
- How your PB compared with national age‑group standards
- Leaderboards for “most first‑place finishes”
All of these were removed.
The organisation stated that competitive comparisons were inconsistent with its “non‑competitive ethos”, but the timing coincided with political pressure campaigns.
- Public visibility of top performers
Parkrun used to highlight standout performances:
- Fastest finishers each week
- Age‑graded high scorers
- Event‑level “records broken this week”
These features were removed to avoid fuelling arguments about fairness in female categories.
- Gender‑based competitive framing
Parkrun previously displayed:
- Male/female first finishers
- Gender‑specific PB tables
- Gender‑specific age‑grading comparisons
These were softened or removed as Parkrun tried to de‑emphasise competition during the political dispute.
Yes, we've increased equality but equality usually requires removing features that are interesting and used to give people a bit of pleasure.
There is zero chance they will swap from gender to sex because sex would be more controversial, not less. What they'll do is stop recording either and make the problem go away. Then Women will need to manually count the female appearing names above them to work out their position against other women.
In parkrun terms equality usually means removing features, because those feature are inherently unfair. Well yes, they're a tiny little bit unfair but it's a small price to pay to have them. I miss every single feature above despite rarely using them, they were nice to have.
I wonder how many people applauding the loss of these features as a blow for feminism are actually women who do parkrun?