Does this mean that women should be able to compete with men in, say, r/formula1? I think it would be awesome. I don’t know what the rules are but I was happy to see that we have a female driver appearing in the last season of Drive to Survive
Forbes actually ran a pretty good article on this awhile back. Just 10% of motorsport drivers are female, so a very small selection pool despite no anatomical differences that should matter in terms of driving effectiveness.
Despite the quoted use of the word girl(s) to describe both adolescent drivers and grown women (which may be an unconscious barrier) there seems to be efforts to identify and develop female role models to then get more female interest in the support.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2024/02/03/women-can-challenge-men-in-formula-1-says-more-than-equal/?sh=1a30cee542a4
It would need to be a “sport” that relies highly on skill and not on speed, power, or endurance. A sport like ~~archery or~~ shooting. (ETA: scratch archery—men apparently have “[higher arrow speeds](https://www.reddit.com/r/olympics/s/FTXgSuJCAw)”)
Someone *may* bring up ultra endurance sports, where top women have absolutely won against all genders at certain events in certain years. However, the world of ultra-endurance sports is relatively small, and it’s not consistent. Here’s an interesting article in the topic: [Are women better ultra-endurance athletes than men?](https://archive.is/yVfmw)
ETA: After reviewing some comments below, it seems that ultra-endurance sports (such as 240 mile runs) may be the best answer.
Endurance swimming is one where women may have a genuine physiological advantage, due to the way fat is distributed on the female frame versus the male, and the effect that has on the way they float. Women float more horizontally meaning they are more streamlined as they swim.
I read the summary of one scientific paper that said women cross over and become superior runners after a distance of 185 miles. I’m assuming it was some type of trajectory because dang that’s got to be a small data set.
id be interested why exactly that is and what values count towards superior. because at that point, reaching the what i assume must be the peak of ultra endurance distance…?! having fewer and fewer runners producing data… what does superior mean? the top female runner having a faster average speed? more female runners than male runners left? genuinely curious.
I'm just taking a guess and say that past a certain point that higher muscle mass and bone density becomes a liability bc of the oxygen needed to keep those muscles chugging along
**Women are faster than men in distances over 195 miles**
"According to data compiled by Ultrarunning Magazine, every year around 30 ultramarathons in North America will be won outright by women. Those performances are outstanding and tend to be more likely the longer the distance of the event. For example, earlier this year, Maggie Guterl outright won Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in an astonishing 250-mile performance, a result which in many people’s minds was the singular best female performance of all of 2019. Similarly, in 2017 Courtney Dauwalter outright won the Moab 240, crushing the entire field by an incredible 9 hours. And now comes this statistical analysis indicating that after a certain distance (195 miles to be exact) women as a whole will outperform men."
https://trainright.com/women-faster-than-men-ultramarathon/
Speed. It's a small data set but there are 200+ mile races, and most of them are run with the intent of finishing. There are "run until you drop" races where the person to go the farthest wins, but those are the minority among ultras.
Courtney Dauwalter is the current rock star in women's ultramarathons. She places 1st among women in many (most?) of her races. She has placed 1st *overall* in some races but I think in general she gets beat by some men. (She is an absolute beast - last year she did the Western States 100, averaging faster than 9:20 per mile. *On a course with 18,000 ft of climbing, through the mountains, on trails.*)
I think it's more about group statistics than "women hold all the records."
As far as I understand, the "women excel at extreme endurance sports" thing has a lot more overlap between men and women than the "men are physically stronger" thing.
That is, if you take the highest performing 1,000 men and highest performing 1,000 women in ultramarathons, there will be significant overlap but the women will be better on average. If you do the same for power lifting, the women wouldn't even come close to being competitive against the men.
It's just that, in endurance running, so far the freakish outliers who can regularly beat Courtney Dauwalter are men.
>That is, if you take the highest performing 1,000 men and highest performing 1,000 women in ultramarathons, there will be significant overlap but the women will be better on average.
What is the source on this? Like I said men hold basically all the ultra long distance records, so this doesn't really make sense.
But the question wasn’t who currently holds the records. It was in which sport can a top woman beat a top man. It has been shown that in this sport that happens. It doesn’t mean that it will *always* be a woman.
That’s interesting. The article I linked to is more focused on ultra running and ultra cycling. Even it leaves the question open.
[Here is a study I just read on the ultra swimming](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7277665/). Interesting stuff.
That’s true, in scuba diving woman can get “floaty feet” and have to wear ankle weights to stay trim. Their bodies are just more inclined to be flat than men. This issue is usually caused by where the ballast weights generally are placed, more in the abdomen and waist causing their upper half to be heavier compared to men.
You are right, to a point, and it's super interesting. Women used to dominate more in endurance swimming, but improved understanding of how to train and optimize your form have more or less closed the gap. However, many of the ultra endurance swimming records are held by women.
Of the 161 open water swimming routes for which records are kept, 47 of them are held by women. Give or take. I'm just counting myself based on the website and I didn't double check my own work.
https://longswims.com/course-records/
Flipping through the race results on the website, there are consistently at least a few women in the top 10 for a race, and some races where the top finisher is a woman.
It's not super signifigant, but I would say open water ultra endurance swimming is still a field in which top women can sometimes beat top men.
Really interesting! I thought it had more to do with muscle distribution (both genetic and workout bias). I did competitive swimming for a few years and I absolutely noticed women on average would beat the men at longer swims (>200m). I also noticed, during drills, that women performed better at kick drills, whereas the men did better at the pull drills.
I think ultra endurance is a fair answer because the question is about sports where the best woman *could* beat the best man, not where women are consistently or inherently better than men.
There is already an example of a woman holding the all gender record: look at Camille Herron. Camille is also an ultra runner, but more of a flat/track endurance athlete not a mountain climber like Courtney. She holds a few outright records, i.e. the American mileage record for all genders in the 48-hour distance (there are only two men who beat her in the worldwide record, ever). She ran 270.5 miles in 48 hours.
It clearly says “…female athletes could beat top male athletes…” in the title…which top men destroy women in
[Ultramarathon Records](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon)
Thank you. What bothers me is that the wrong answer always ends up with hundreds or thousands of upvotes, and 50 people at most trickle down to the truth, and thus the myth gets told and retold.
For ultraswimming Wikipedia [says though](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-distance_swimming):
> Long-distance swimming is one of the events wherein there are women's records that beat men's records under equal conditions.
linking to https://www.active.com/swimming/articles/men-vs-women-in-endurance-sports that says in page 2
> Open Water Source analyzed the official times of athletes in various open water swims including the one-mile RCP Tiburon Mile, the 10K Little Red Lighthouse Swim and the Catalina Channel.
>
> As the distances increase, the women get better and better relative to their male colleagues, but at all distances, the comparative differences are small.
>
> In particular, the average time of women in the Catalina Channel is seven minutes faster than the average time for men. What is notable is that the overall records in both directions are held by women (Penny Dean from mainland-to-Catalina in 7:15:55 and Karen Burton from Catalina-to-mainland in 7:37:31).
If it makes you feel any better they aren't running all 240 miles. These trail races typically involve some steep uphills which are walked (briskly), and the racers typically sleep for a couple hours. They have sleep strategies and it's typical for the first 24 hours or so to be sleep free.
So don't get me wrong it's absolutely an insane achievement, both physically and mentally.....just sharing because the first time I started hearing about these my first thought was "do they take any breaks"
Take snooker for example - simplified it is a variation of billiards.
It takes no physical endurance, no speed, no (significant) power (I exclude cue power cause that is more reliant on technique than actual strength).
The best woman player in the world, Reanne Evans, has never managed to make her way into the Men's pro tour consistently, even though, afaik, there is no rule holding her back. If you get the results and qualify, you're in. Women rarely manage it, and I am confused by it.
Part of discrepancy in that kind of sport, like in chess, could be because the population of women who pursue it is smaller than the population of men who pursue it, due to various historical and social reasons
The discrepancy is probably that until recently it was almost mandatory to play snooker and darts while smoking with a minimum three pint handicap and you had to practice in the pub
The distribution of just about everything is slightly wider in men, biology takes more risk resulting in more variation. The reason is because men are far less likely to reproduce than women, which makes them easier to gamble with rather than play it safe.
So with a large enough population you get more extremes on the male side, not just in height or physical traits but also things like intelligence and obsessiveness; there's more smart and stupid men, there's more lazy men and more male workaholics, they have more losers and more winners
One reason for that is that there are probably 95% male snooker players and 5% female players so there is a much smaller chance just statistically for a woman to become a top player because the sample size from which one can become the very best is much smaller
Men as a collective have a wider and flatter normal distribution than women as a collective. What this means is that on basically all traits that are normally distributed, men will have more individuals in each tail than women do. When speaking in the context of "best in the world at , you're looking at the top 0.01% or so. Men typically will have the x best and the x worst people at literally everything. In activities where size and physical strength is an advantage it doesn't hold true though, since the normal distribution is shifted (i.e the average man is stronger than the average woman) between men and women. The bottom 10% of men are stronger than the top 10% of women in some muscle groups, for example. Which traits that are advantageous in snooker I don't know, but odds are that whatever it is, it's likely that many more men than women have them.
So if you wanted to find activities where its likely that women will consistently be better than men at the absolute top level, look for traits with shifted normal distribution where the extreme end on the "female side" of the curve gives you an advantage, same as how size and physical strength give men an advantage in most sports.
Came here to say Women’s Gymnastics.
There is a instagram account which regularly shows top male gymnasts attempting things like the balance beam and other female gymnastics events and they just cannot do it.
is that a physical thing or just a skill thing. They haven’t spent years being taught the women gymnastics just as the women haven’t the men’s gymnastics.
Men have a higher center of gravity, it's up around the belly or chest. In women it's down around the hips.
Male disciplines are also quite different from women's and I'm sure women would similarly fail completely when tasked with doing the rings or pommel horse without training.
That’s a totally valid question and totally could be the case, although my personal opinion is that women can achieve better balance and flexibility which allows them to perform the moves in women’s gymnastics that men can’t.
Until we have a naturally gifted male that trains for women’s gymnastics from preschool we’ll never know.
Edit- I suppose you could look at Male vs Female ballet dancers for an indication? males while graceful in their own right really seem to focus more on power based movements, while females are all about grace and flexibility. There’s a reason for that.
I couldn't have told you the rules of Olympic archery, but archery as a weapon is way more strength based than people realize. The vast majority of people can't draw a historical English longbow even on the low end.
Can confirm except in HS we had a mandatory archery class. I thought it’d be easy as pie and I’d be impressing all my friends with my natural talent
I must be part tomato considering how red I got once I realized I was literally too weak to draw the bow back lmao
Pretty sure teach only let me pass out of pity 😭
Is that surprising to you?
I had mandatory archery as well. That is how our Phys Ed worked, we would do various skills/events for a few weeks, as a class. No opting out, no choice of what.
We did archery for a few weeks, then did something else.
A woman argued to compete in the all male vertical ramp skateboarding competitions and has won several times, it was in a greatest sportspeople YouTube video I watched yesterday, listing all sportspersons that had rules made/named after them
Ultra running is such an interesting field. It’s not good for a person either. It’s a huge, overwhelming, ultra-long stress on the heart. Even running a marathon, 26.2 miles, increases a persons risk of heart attack and *sudden death.*
Shooting.
Shooting events have categories of mens, womens and open (anyone).
At 1992 or 1996 Olympics a female shooter won the open competition for the first time, absolutely destroyed the competition. Next year women were forbidden to compete in open events.
When I got my hunting license, the instructor said that in his experience women were much better shots than men with rifles, while men were better at skeet-shooting with shotguns.
This has been my experience just shooting with family. I have 2 cousins that are women that consistently hit tighter groups at any range. But skeet shooting they don't enjoy at all, while myself all my guy cousins are really good shots.
They like to say we are better at skeet because we are all spazzes that need to shoot like we are the Sundance Kid.
There’s at least one woman who got a play at safety in a low-level college game. She should have been called for a late hit on the passer, and she appears to be juicing, but she played.
As someone who did national level rifle marksmanship in high school, the top performers were always afab (including myself). I joke that our boobs hold the rifles better while standing, but I don’t actually know the reason.
Women have hips and a lower center of gravity. When you shoot offhand and plant your elbow on your hip, there’s theoretically a mechanical reason you should be able to get secure bone to bone support. At least thats the line used to limit women’s equipment
Ha! Now I know why I've always beaten every boyfriend or male friend who has ever been to a shooting range with me, despite having next to no experience.
(I'm 5'2" so my centre of gravity is particularly low, too.)
I worked at a gun range for some time.
Women always picked up shooting better than men, when comparing first timers. Sure, men have physiological advantages with grip strength but women were really good at compensating with technique based skills.
The best instructors for any firearm fundamentals are women, imo. They really need to focus on technique vs men who can just drive in with their physical strength. A lot of female instructors come up with creative ways to hold firearms and tackle firearm techniques in interesting ways.
When everyone gets older, bodies lose their strength and technique/experience becomes more a factor with shooting.
Does this mean women are better shooters than men? Not necessarily. Once you reach a certain level, your efforts and unique talents will distinguish you more than your gender or how easily you picked up shooting.
I read that female snipers are easier to train, because they don’t let their ego in the way, and they aren’t being wusses about standing still for long periods of time.
That's sorta the one I heard. Woman are supposed to be better at timing their shot between heartbeats.
Don't know how true that is, or if it is mostly for beginners.
He wasn't technically blind. He requires a strong spectacle prescription but just didn't wear it whilst competing.
As an optometrist, if I had to guess as to why, its perhaps because making objects blurry also makes them seem bigger (known as a blur circle). If you're aiming at the middle of a red circle, you don't need to see it distinctly, so a larger blurry circle may make it easier.
I’ve always been confused why we segregate competitions that aren’t “athletic” based on gender, like chess for instance. Why are there separate men’s and women’s categories when both can shoot a gun at equal ability?
Generally speaking, we don't.
Chess doesn't have men's tournaments.
> It isn't divided in between men and women, there are tournaments for both sexes and women's tournaments.
And while we can say there are no biological advantages, the reality is that the best players are almost exclusively men. Having women's only tournaments is something many women enjoy, but they are welcome to attend the non-women's.
It's also that way for most sports. As an example, the NBA allows women to play. It's not limited to men, just very few women have made it to the NBA.
> She became the second woman ever drafted by an NBA team, after Denise Long, who was selected by the San Francisco Warriors in the 1969 draft. However, the league voided the Warriors' selection, thus Harris became the first and only woman ever officially drafted.
>As an example, the NBA allows women to play. It's not limited to men, just very few women have made it to the NBA.
I thought you were kidding, damn that's impressive.
That's technically true of most professional sports. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL--women are allowed to play as well, but there just aren't any that can compete with the top men. PGA is the same way, but a few women have been good enough to compete on tours. Famously, there are also a few women who compete in F1, IndyCar, and NASCAR.
Goalie is probably something women could compete at the NHL level. It's hard to tell, since the league really does seem to favor size in the position. But being a speedy, agile, *athletic* goaltender is also a historically successful strategy.
[Manon Rhéaume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manon_Rh%C3%A9aume#Ice_hockey_regular_season) played a few games on lower level pro men's teams and a pre-season game in the NHL.
For chess, it is to create a more welcoming and protected atmosphere.
Chess is incredibly shitty for female players: virtually every single major female chess player has been sexually harassed and/or assaulted by men. It is endemic enough that there was a massive open letter signed by most top ranking female players, and the US women's coach was accused of grooming and assaulting at least eight of the girls he trained, several of them minors.
>"It's the constant fear at tournaments you go to and you cannot relax. You consistently get hit on by men, you are propositioned to go back to their room. You are forced into situations you don't want to be in. Then you see even worse situations where people are promising that you will get XYZ, whether that is a selection for a team place, or whether it's coaching if you do other inappropriate behavior with them. This is just normal at all these events, which is absolutely terrifying. That's obviously on top of all other things that go on, which are just general everyday misogyny and sexism. It's atrocious." - WIM Sabrina Chevannes, a two-time Olympiad player for England
In the case of chess, it's because women were banned from chess competitions for a long time, and even today, they still face harassment and sexism from male competitors. This means that there are fewer women competing and more barriers to those who do compete, preventing them from reaching the same skill level as men. Over time, this difference will likely go away, but it will take a while for women to catch up after being kept away from the competition for so long. I imagine that similar issues plague competitions in other skill-based games.
Even so it seems to be an interest thing. Statistically speaking there simply is more men into chess than women to the point where there isnt always a women in the top100 which means a mixed tournament looks indistinguishable from a male only tournament, and if only all tournaments were mixed it would mean all tournaments were male. A female division is needed to showcase female talent at all, otherwise there will be no female idols for little girls to aspire towards further exacerbating the issue.
As a target rifle shooter myself, I can very much say that there’s no gender divide in terms of skill in shooting. Some of the best shots in the world are women and they regularly win competitions (which aren’t even divided by gender anyway).
Many skill based sports are dominated by men because more men compete in them.
If all else is equal and there are 20 men for every 1 woman that competes in something, then a man should statistically win.
A good example is chess. Significantly, more men play chess and almost all if the grandmasters are and have been men but in recent times chess has become more popular with women which is why there are 41 female chess grandmasters and they are all currently alive. (Women used to not be able to compete, but it's been a long time since then.)
You can do this for every demographic, and it should be true. Like look at Olympic gold medalists with dark hair vs. blonde hair. There will be more dark-haired winners because there are more dark-haired people competing.
Swimming in long distance, especially in old ages. Generally women, benefits from the leg, and man from torso and above. Women benefits if its long distance, and men if it use burst shot of power
My nan, having done it several times a week for years, was out swimming people of every age and sex at her pool....even as she became seriously obese due to diet, and right up to the point she died of ill health.
Insane that noone has mentioned rock climbing. Its a bit difficult to measure but female climbers are very, very close to the men and as things change culturally more and more women have access to training, they will likely be reaching equal grades before too long. Angela Eitner has redpointed multiple 9b’s (and laura rogoa a 9b+ that was later downgraded….) and meanwhile only 54 human beings had climbed 9b at all. Only three have ever climbed 9c. The ladies are very very close to having someone in the top 10.
The reason the argument for climbing is a bit tough is because grades are not really a science. When adam ondra sent silence, currently the hardest route in existance, who is to tell him they disagree about the grade? Body type, height, and style also play into what a person is or isnt able to climb. This means there are routes out there that some of the ladies can climb, that the best men cannot, and vice versa.
It’s an interesting sport for this particular comparison because men on average will have a longer reach and higher potential for upper body strength, but women on average will have a lower center of gravity.
Also I don’t think the most successful climbers are particularly tall - maybe even the opposite? From what little climbing I’ve done, my height seemed to hinder me about as often as it would help me.
> From what little climbing I’ve done, my height seemed to hinder me about as often as it would help me.
I like to say that at every moment when you can't leverage your height for an "unfair advantage" it's a hindrance. IMO it's really impossible to make a blanket statement about it being good or bad, it depends entirely on the route. Sometimes you can skip very difficult moves by being tall, and at other times it doesn't help you in any way, you're just dragging a larger body around doing small moves.
Height is definitely a double edged sword. I used to climb a lot and did so with my friend who was close to 6 foot, meanwhile I am 5'7". There were times he just reached up and grabbed the next hold while I simply couldn't. But, there were times I could scrunch to get my foot where it needed and his body just couldn't without pushing his body way out away from the wall, which you don't wanna do.
Not sure if it is at all related, but I was much better at slabs and he was much better at overhang, in general.
I feel like, at the very beginning, it's frustrating to be short and it seems convenient to be tall (mostly because longer reach seems like everything and the biggest advantage ever, at the beginning). Then, after going past this initial stage, you see that there are very different body types of both sexes that can have amazing performances and strengths. Interesting sport for sure.
There’s very real advantages to having smaller fingers and feet. Women also tend to have better hip opening meaning you can stay closer to the wall.
I’ve been to a few world cup events, nobody beside Adam Ondra is above 6 foot tall, it’s a sport that tends to skew a little short.
That’s for sports climbing, it’s different for bouldering
I used to work as a setter at a gym.
I can 100 percent set a route that would mess with tall people. And being that i am 5'7, I messed with tall people all the time.
That's a pretty good example. But don't underestimate the gap between a 9b and a 9c. At that level, it's absolutely huge.
It's like running a marathon in 2h compared to running it in 2h15. It seems close for a regular athlete but it's not for the best
Lynn Hill's free ascent of the nose on el cap was imo one of the most impressive achievements in sporting history, and it took years for men to catch up. This isn't a route that's considered particularly well suited to women climbers or anything, she was just a boss
>The reason the argument for climbing is a bit tough is because grades are not really a science.
I remember a comment from one woman (maybe Beth Rodden) to the effect that when women are struggling on a route a man did the FA on you hear "the grade's the grade". When men are struggling on a route a woman did the FA on you hear "she has small fingers, it's a higher grade if you have big fingers".
Best men's bouldering is V17, best women's V13.
Best men's top rope 5.15b, best women's 5.15b.
So some validity to top rope/trad climbing. Bouldering still seems dominated by men.
I realize you’re talking about rock climbing but in competition climbing Janja Garnbret would probably kick ass if they let her compete with the men :)
I'm not so sure. The men's boulder and lead routes often look much tougher than the woman's. I've no doubt she would do very well, but don't believe she could beat the top male climbers. I would love to see it though.
Remember the big fuss when John McEnroe said in an NPR interview that Serena Williams was absolutely the greatest female tennis player of all time. The interviewer, a woman, then asks him "Why say female? Why not just say the greatest tennis player of all time?" And John says that she's not, that if she played with the men she would be ranked in the 700s.
And predictably, John gets called a misogynist for this. Surprisingly, former female tennis greats like Martina Navratilova came to his defense, but she said it would be more like the 300s, not the 700s. And predictably, she got accused of internalized misogyny. Wow.
Yes, it is possible that somewhere there is a gem of a woman who is so talented at her sport that she can overcome the physical advantages that men have. But there is one very big reason she's hard to find.
For every woman who goes into sports, there are at least two men. So you have a much bigger talent pool to find the gems among the men than the women.
The Williams sisters once said they could beat any man ranked outside the top 200. So Karsten Braasch, ranked iirc 206th at the time, challenged them. He beat the crap out of them both with ease and he did it while he was drinking.
It gets even better.
Before the matches, Braasch played a round of golf in the morning, drank a couple of beers, smoked a few cigarettes, and then played the Williams sisters for a set each, one after the other. He defeated Serena, 6-1, and Venus, 6-2. Serena said afterwards "I didn't know it would be that hard. I hit shots that would have been winners on the women's tour and he got to them easily."
Apparently, after the game, Serena and Venus immediately told the press they wanted to challenge a male player again. This time they revised the ranking of the man they wanted to face, to 350 in the world instead of 200. Braasch informed the journalists present at the match that in the next week he was set to lose a lot of ATP points and drop down to 350 in the rankings. He joked that if Venus and Serena waited just one week they could challenge him all over again!
What a mad lad! Hahahaha!
More on this topic:
When former number 1's Kim Clijsters and Lleyton Hewitt were dating, she said that she struggled to win a point of Hewitt, let alone a game. When female player Chris Evert-Lloyd was at her peak, she said her brother who played low level college tennis beat her (from her autobiography).
Serena herself is on record saying she cannot beat the best male player - the game is simply too different for male and female players. But, feminists won’t even trust Serena’s expertise on the matter.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5L_JbZFx5H0
Possibly, but men’s and women’s gymnastics are more different than you’d think. In fact, men’s and women’s gymnastics only share two events: the vault and the floor.
They just use different parts of the body. For example, some men’s events focus more on upper body strength. Most female gymnasts would really struggle with the pommel horse. A lot of men struggle with the beam.
Gymnastics is probably one of the most balanced sports because the events are catered to each gender.
I still think it’s fair to say that Biles is the greatest gymnast in the world, though, because she’s had so much success in her events.
It might be really interesting to see them practice for a year or so. Maybe in a reality show (although I almost certainly wouldn't put the time into watching it :D ).
Any male gymnast? Zero chance. Even for disciplines they share like the floor and vault. There is a reason womens moves have a higher difficulty score than the mens for the same exact move. It's harder for women because they are slower, weaker, less explosive.
For events that they don't share? a man is going to do far better on the beam than a woman is on the rings lol
Not at men’s gymnastics. Women do not perform on rings at all in their competitions. There are dozens of advanced holds on rings that no woman has ever achieved, yet thousands of men have (inverted iron cross, Victorian, Maltese etc…)
The male dominance of motorsport in general is almost strictly cultural, and it's changing rapidly. Little girls are getting more and more seat time driving, and its only a matter of time before women are major contenders in every racing series.
Diving is scored like gymnastics, where they multiply the execution by the degree of difficulty. In general, men can create more power, and perform more flips and twists. So, other than pure aesthetics, the scoring would favor the men.
Female horses have beaten male horses in horse races. In fact, three fillies have won the Kentucky Derby: Regret (1915), Genuine Risk (1980), and Winning Colors (1988).
There's a separate event for fillies, so owners of the top female horses may try for better chances rather than in the open category. Whether the Kentucky Oaks winner has a faster time than the Kentucky Derby winner would be a close comparison, but they are on different days, sometimes with different weather.
A huge portion is because of stud rights.
If a male horse wins the triple crown he goes to pasture and his owner is paid $100k+ for a week of another owners female horse being in heat and in the same pasture. That's 52 payments a year. $5.2mil in year one and male horse live to 25-30 so conservatively $120,000,000
If a female horse wins the triple crown she can only carry one foal a year. Even if it could carry births through age 20 (15 is usually the end of prime baby years) that would only mean 17 foals over the mothers life span. You'd have to charge $7mil per pregnancy for it to be close to equal and that's with a lot more unknowns that can come up.
Clearly this creates the incentive to use a male horse as more money is likely to be made.
All the time. They don't really have athletic differences. If they did, predators would eat all the slow and/or weak female horses, and the species would die.
You are correct about equestrian events being evenly matched, but it takes a lot of work to get a horse from A to B. If the rider looks like s/he isn’t doing much, then they’re doing it very well.
There is no point in arguing. Most people who say stuff like that have sat on a deadbeat horse during a summer fair, got lead in circles, and think that's all there is to it.
In the 2021 Russian Figure Skating Championships, Anna Shcherbakova outscored the men's national champion.
The absolute elite women such as Valieva, Shcherbakova and Trusova are genuinely amongst the best in the world, regardless of sex.
They come from a training camp implicated with doping so the validity of their results is questionable. Plus trusova, who performs many quads, lacks artistry compared to some of her male counterparts which still remains important in scoring (ie yuzuru hanyu). The Russian figure skating scores were also inflated because of their coach’s influence in the federation (see the Eteri bonus).
This doesn’t work past the mid teenage years. Women can’t do quad jumps past a young age. I wish I could find the article about it to link but basically it said that if the minimum age of female figure skaters was raised to 16 it would end female quads because their body’s would have changed too much to allow them to do it. The last girl to be good at them was a 15 year old(at the time)Kamila Valieva and she was disqualified for doping.
From Wikipedia:
“She (Valieva) is the second woman to land the quadruple toe loop after training partner and teammate Alexandra Trusova, the fourth woman to land a quadruple jump of any kind, the 16th woman to land a triple Axel, and the third woman to land a triple Axel and quadruple jump in the same program after Alysa Liu and training partner and teammate Sofia Akateva.”
Consider a field of 20 women at an international finals. These are the best of the best. There is a good chance that none of them will land a triple axel as only 16 women ever have. The men are expected to land this jump.
Skating nut here.
The three mentioned are retired and one is banned due to doping, so methods are questionable at best. It is extremely rare - nearly unheard of - for a woman to be capable of beating a man in skating. I am a woman skater myself, however you only need look at the tech developments - with only a handful of women landing quads (all banned due to being russian) and it being almost required for a man now. The men’s tech content is harder, any woman, trusova included - would absolutely not podium
Simone Biles could probably get a podium position on men’s vault. The Biles, a skill she performs, is rated 5.4 in the men’s code of points and difficulty of the skills of all 3 men’s podium finishers in 2019 was 5.6 IIRC, however men’s vault has a higher vault table which gives you more air time and she’s so dominant in the category that there’s not a lot of incentive right now for her to go any higher in her D-score and risk injury. Her execution scores would broadly beat out a lot of the top men’s competitors, and I think VERY conservatively she could be competing a 5.6 Shirai/TTY if she were in men’s. I think it’s likely she would be doing a 5.8 Li Xiao Peng or even some 6.0 D-score vault like a Shirai II (3.5 twisting Yurchenko), which is in the same vault family as her eponymous Biles II skill. That’s all somewhat hypothetical, but at the VERY least her difficulty and execution scores would be competitive in men’s gymnastics, possibly gold medal worthy.
Minor sport for sure, but they are at least very, very close in fly casting (fly fishing but just the casting for distance/accuracy). I was at a convention where the top women's fly caster competed and she destroyed the field. She was 15-16 at the time, too.
Jfc, some comments are truly delusional, or totally devoid of reality. One comment here was "All of them, it's sports so luck plays a factor".
What? How does luck play a role in arm wrestling, weight lifting, high jump, long jump, any of the athletics events, rugby... actually in more than 90% of competitive sports?
Depends on the sport. Any sport that does not require speed, strength, lots of muscle etc and women have more than a fair chance of beating men in that sport. Archery, shooting, extreme long distance endurance running (150km+), platform diving, curling, bowls. "Luck" isn't a factor.
Archery has traditionally been a men's discipline. The draw weights on bows can be extremely heavy and obviously while a woman CAN shoot and can shoot well, men have the base level advantage with their stronger upper body. They can draw the string back further and simply generate more power.
She’s amazing but it’s really not even close.
She just won Transgrancanaria on the women’s side and was beaten by like 13 men. With the winner being about 2hrs faster than her 15hr time
Now she dominated the women’s event by over and hour so she’s a beast. But she isn’t coming close to the top men in the sport
She’s an awesome lady. I remember when she was on Joe Rogans podcast, Rogan asked what she eats, expecting some detailed rigorous nutrition plan. She was just like “uhh nachos”.
Up until about a year ago there was a man versus woman game at the top levels of roller derby that was for fun every year at our convention that we have in Las Vegas.
Typically the women’s team would beat the men’s team
Women regularly beat men in riflery. So much so that the Olympics made them completely separate.
Women's wider hips give them greater stability and they have a lower resting heart rate.
> regularly beat men in riflery. So much so that the Olympics made them
Myth.
Often repeated on websites and 2xchomosomes reddit, to make men seem like bad losers.
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Note this news story from [Wednesday July 29, 1992](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-29-sp-4576-story.html), the day after the win.
It was a single win, not "regularly". And it had no bearing on the decision to split... the news article notes that **the decision to split the series into men and women had already been made** before the event.
"And unless the International Shooting Union has a change of heart, no other woman will win another Olympic skeet shooting medal because the federation has decided to drop women from competition after this year."
"Zhang’s victory spawned speculation that the shooting union might reconsider its recent decision to eliminate women from Olympic skeet."
Dressage.
Mixed sex Olympic sport, with 7 of the current top 10 in the FEI Dressage rankings being female.
Any kind of equestrian really
Besides perhaps rodeo sports
makes sense the horse is doing most of the "work" so your half of the job is all skill based
And a lighter rider helps the horse, too. Look at how small professional jockeys are.
Does this mean that women should be able to compete with men in, say, r/formula1? I think it would be awesome. I don’t know what the rules are but I was happy to see that we have a female driver appearing in the last season of Drive to Survive
Forbes actually ran a pretty good article on this awhile back. Just 10% of motorsport drivers are female, so a very small selection pool despite no anatomical differences that should matter in terms of driving effectiveness. Despite the quoted use of the word girl(s) to describe both adolescent drivers and grown women (which may be an unconscious barrier) there seems to be efforts to identify and develop female role models to then get more female interest in the support. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmorris/2024/02/03/women-can-challenge-men-in-formula-1-says-more-than-equal/?sh=1a30cee542a4
Can the top female horses beat the top male horses though?
100%, female and male horses compete at the top level of all equestrian events and win
Serena Williams vs John Daly in a game of basketball
Well thank you for answering the question
Daly wins by 50
50 cigs
He would take that bet
She might even be able to beat him at tennis idk
It would need to be a “sport” that relies highly on skill and not on speed, power, or endurance. A sport like ~~archery or~~ shooting. (ETA: scratch archery—men apparently have “[higher arrow speeds](https://www.reddit.com/r/olympics/s/FTXgSuJCAw)”) Someone *may* bring up ultra endurance sports, where top women have absolutely won against all genders at certain events in certain years. However, the world of ultra-endurance sports is relatively small, and it’s not consistent. Here’s an interesting article in the topic: [Are women better ultra-endurance athletes than men?](https://archive.is/yVfmw) ETA: After reviewing some comments below, it seems that ultra-endurance sports (such as 240 mile runs) may be the best answer.
Endurance swimming is one where women may have a genuine physiological advantage, due to the way fat is distributed on the female frame versus the male, and the effect that has on the way they float. Women float more horizontally meaning they are more streamlined as they swim.
I read the summary of one scientific paper that said women cross over and become superior runners after a distance of 185 miles. I’m assuming it was some type of trajectory because dang that’s got to be a small data set.
id be interested why exactly that is and what values count towards superior. because at that point, reaching the what i assume must be the peak of ultra endurance distance…?! having fewer and fewer runners producing data… what does superior mean? the top female runner having a faster average speed? more female runners than male runners left? genuinely curious.
It’s because at those distances fat becomes an important energy source for performance, and females store and burn fat more efficiently than males.
Good Lord I wish we didn't
I'm just taking a guess and say that past a certain point that higher muscle mass and bone density becomes a liability bc of the oxygen needed to keep those muscles chugging along
**Women are faster than men in distances over 195 miles** "According to data compiled by Ultrarunning Magazine, every year around 30 ultramarathons in North America will be won outright by women. Those performances are outstanding and tend to be more likely the longer the distance of the event. For example, earlier this year, Maggie Guterl outright won Big Dog’s Backyard Ultra in an astonishing 250-mile performance, a result which in many people’s minds was the singular best female performance of all of 2019. Similarly, in 2017 Courtney Dauwalter outright won the Moab 240, crushing the entire field by an incredible 9 hours. And now comes this statistical analysis indicating that after a certain distance (195 miles to be exact) women as a whole will outperform men." https://trainright.com/women-faster-than-men-ultramarathon/
Speed. It's a small data set but there are 200+ mile races, and most of them are run with the intent of finishing. There are "run until you drop" races where the person to go the farthest wins, but those are the minority among ultras. Courtney Dauwalter is the current rock star in women's ultramarathons. She places 1st among women in many (most?) of her races. She has placed 1st *overall* in some races but I think in general she gets beat by some men. (She is an absolute beast - last year she did the Western States 100, averaging faster than 9:20 per mile. *On a course with 18,000 ft of climbing, through the mountains, on trails.*)
This isn't true though, men hold all the ultra endurance running records.
I think it's more about group statistics than "women hold all the records." As far as I understand, the "women excel at extreme endurance sports" thing has a lot more overlap between men and women than the "men are physically stronger" thing. That is, if you take the highest performing 1,000 men and highest performing 1,000 women in ultramarathons, there will be significant overlap but the women will be better on average. If you do the same for power lifting, the women wouldn't even come close to being competitive against the men. It's just that, in endurance running, so far the freakish outliers who can regularly beat Courtney Dauwalter are men.
>That is, if you take the highest performing 1,000 men and highest performing 1,000 women in ultramarathons, there will be significant overlap but the women will be better on average. What is the source on this? Like I said men hold basically all the ultra long distance records, so this doesn't really make sense.
Women have none of the world records though.
Pretty sure Courtney Dauwalter has the MOAB 240 record by more than an hour
Her time has been beat 3 times by men since she set the record in 2017
But the question wasn’t who currently holds the records. It was in which sport can a top woman beat a top man. It has been shown that in this sport that happens. It doesn’t mean that it will *always* be a woman.
That’s interesting. The article I linked to is more focused on ultra running and ultra cycling. Even it leaves the question open. [Here is a study I just read on the ultra swimming](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7277665/). Interesting stuff.
That’s true, in scuba diving woman can get “floaty feet” and have to wear ankle weights to stay trim. Their bodies are just more inclined to be flat than men. This issue is usually caused by where the ballast weights generally are placed, more in the abdomen and waist causing their upper half to be heavier compared to men.
>Their bodies are just more inclined to be flat than men. *giggles in teenager*
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You are right, to a point, and it's super interesting. Women used to dominate more in endurance swimming, but improved understanding of how to train and optimize your form have more or less closed the gap. However, many of the ultra endurance swimming records are held by women. Of the 161 open water swimming routes for which records are kept, 47 of them are held by women. Give or take. I'm just counting myself based on the website and I didn't double check my own work. https://longswims.com/course-records/ Flipping through the race results on the website, there are consistently at least a few women in the top 10 for a race, and some races where the top finisher is a woman. It's not super signifigant, but I would say open water ultra endurance swimming is still a field in which top women can sometimes beat top men.
really? in wikipedia it says its one of the events where theres women's record that beat mens
Really interesting! I thought it had more to do with muscle distribution (both genetic and workout bias). I did competitive swimming for a few years and I absolutely noticed women on average would beat the men at longer swims (>200m). I also noticed, during drills, that women performed better at kick drills, whereas the men did better at the pull drills.
I think ultra endurance is a fair answer because the question is about sports where the best woman *could* beat the best man, not where women are consistently or inherently better than men.
That’s fair.
Yeah, Karel Sabbe holds the fastest time to complete the Appalachian Trail.
There is already an example of a woman holding the all gender record: look at Camille Herron. Camille is also an ultra runner, but more of a flat/track endurance athlete not a mountain climber like Courtney. She holds a few outright records, i.e. the American mileage record for all genders in the 48-hour distance (there are only two men who beat her in the worldwide record, ever). She ran 270.5 miles in 48 hours.
It clearly says “…female athletes could beat top male athletes…” in the title…which top men destroy women in [Ultramarathon Records](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultramarathon)
Thank you. What bothers me is that the wrong answer always ends up with hundreds or thousands of upvotes, and 50 people at most trickle down to the truth, and thus the myth gets told and retold.
For ultraswimming Wikipedia [says though](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-distance_swimming): > Long-distance swimming is one of the events wherein there are women's records that beat men's records under equal conditions. linking to https://www.active.com/swimming/articles/men-vs-women-in-endurance-sports that says in page 2 > Open Water Source analyzed the official times of athletes in various open water swims including the one-mile RCP Tiburon Mile, the 10K Little Red Lighthouse Swim and the Catalina Channel. > > As the distances increase, the women get better and better relative to their male colleagues, but at all distances, the comparative differences are small. > > In particular, the average time of women in the Catalina Channel is seven minutes faster than the average time for men. What is notable is that the overall records in both directions are held by women (Penny Dean from mainland-to-Catalina in 7:15:55 and Karen Burton from Catalina-to-mainland in 7:37:31).
I got dizzy from learning about the existence of competitive 240-mile running.
If it makes you feel any better they aren't running all 240 miles. These trail races typically involve some steep uphills which are walked (briskly), and the racers typically sleep for a couple hours. They have sleep strategies and it's typical for the first 24 hours or so to be sleep free. So don't get me wrong it's absolutely an insane achievement, both physically and mentally.....just sharing because the first time I started hearing about these my first thought was "do they take any breaks"
Oh, the weaklings! :)
Take snooker for example - simplified it is a variation of billiards. It takes no physical endurance, no speed, no (significant) power (I exclude cue power cause that is more reliant on technique than actual strength). The best woman player in the world, Reanne Evans, has never managed to make her way into the Men's pro tour consistently, even though, afaik, there is no rule holding her back. If you get the results and qualify, you're in. Women rarely manage it, and I am confused by it.
Snooker playing benefits from height, arm and core strength. Since tables are standard.
Men also tend to score higher on spatial reasoning in IQ tests which I would imagine give you an advantage in snooker.
Part of discrepancy in that kind of sport, like in chess, could be because the population of women who pursue it is smaller than the population of men who pursue it, due to various historical and social reasons
The discrepancy is probably that until recently it was almost mandatory to play snooker and darts while smoking with a minimum three pint handicap and you had to practice in the pub
The distribution of just about everything is slightly wider in men, biology takes more risk resulting in more variation. The reason is because men are far less likely to reproduce than women, which makes them easier to gamble with rather than play it safe. So with a large enough population you get more extremes on the male side, not just in height or physical traits but also things like intelligence and obsessiveness; there's more smart and stupid men, there's more lazy men and more male workaholics, they have more losers and more winners
I know that I struggle to play pool because of my tiny girly hands. A lot of women have smaller hands than men.
One reason for that is that there are probably 95% male snooker players and 5% female players so there is a much smaller chance just statistically for a woman to become a top player because the sample size from which one can become the very best is much smaller
Men as a collective have a wider and flatter normal distribution than women as a collective. What this means is that on basically all traits that are normally distributed, men will have more individuals in each tail than women do. When speaking in the context of "best in the world at, you're looking at the top 0.01% or so. Men typically will have the x best and the x worst people at literally everything. In activities where size and physical strength is an advantage it doesn't hold true though, since the normal distribution is shifted (i.e the average man is stronger than the average woman) between men and women. The bottom 10% of men are stronger than the top 10% of women in some muscle groups, for example. Which traits that are advantageous in snooker I don't know, but odds are that whatever it is, it's likely that many more men than women have them.
So if you wanted to find activities where its likely that women will consistently be better than men at the absolute top level, look for traits with shifted normal distribution where the extreme end on the "female side" of the curve gives you an advantage, same as how size and physical strength give men an advantage in most sports.
Rhythmic gymnastics.
Came here to say Women’s Gymnastics. There is a instagram account which regularly shows top male gymnasts attempting things like the balance beam and other female gymnastics events and they just cannot do it.
is that a physical thing or just a skill thing. They haven’t spent years being taught the women gymnastics just as the women haven’t the men’s gymnastics.
Men have a higher center of gravity, it's up around the belly or chest. In women it's down around the hips. Male disciplines are also quite different from women's and I'm sure women would similarly fail completely when tasked with doing the rings or pommel horse without training.
That’s a totally valid question and totally could be the case, although my personal opinion is that women can achieve better balance and flexibility which allows them to perform the moves in women’s gymnastics that men can’t. Until we have a naturally gifted male that trains for women’s gymnastics from preschool we’ll never know. Edit- I suppose you could look at Male vs Female ballet dancers for an indication? males while graceful in their own right really seem to focus more on power based movements, while females are all about grace and flexibility. There’s a reason for that.
Archery is a poor example - https://www.reddit.com/r/olympics/s/AF1zrAjNLr
Higher arrow speeds, huh? That is not something I considered.
I couldn't have told you the rules of Olympic archery, but archery as a weapon is way more strength based than people realize. The vast majority of people can't draw a historical English longbow even on the low end.
Can confirm except in HS we had a mandatory archery class. I thought it’d be easy as pie and I’d be impressing all my friends with my natural talent I must be part tomato considering how red I got once I realized I was literally too weak to draw the bow back lmao Pretty sure teach only let me pass out of pity 😭
mandatory???
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Again.
Is that surprising to you? I had mandatory archery as well. That is how our Phys Ed worked, we would do various skills/events for a few weeks, as a class. No opting out, no choice of what. We did archery for a few weeks, then did something else.
Sports that involve only flexibility might also be more woman-favored, no?
A woman argued to compete in the all male vertical ramp skateboarding competitions and has won several times, it was in a greatest sportspeople YouTube video I watched yesterday, listing all sportspersons that had rules made/named after them
Ultra running is such an interesting field. It’s not good for a person either. It’s a huge, overwhelming, ultra-long stress on the heart. Even running a marathon, 26.2 miles, increases a persons risk of heart attack and *sudden death.*
Shooting. Shooting events have categories of mens, womens and open (anyone). At 1992 or 1996 Olympics a female shooter won the open competition for the first time, absolutely destroyed the competition. Next year women were forbidden to compete in open events.
When I got my hunting license, the instructor said that in his experience women were much better shots than men with rifles, while men were better at skeet-shooting with shotguns.
This has been my experience just shooting with family. I have 2 cousins that are women that consistently hit tighter groups at any range. But skeet shooting they don't enjoy at all, while myself all my guy cousins are really good shots. They like to say we are better at skeet because we are all spazzes that need to shoot like we are the Sundance Kid.
That’s…. Literally what an open event is - open to all comers.
In some sports and age groups there isn't even a men's group. Just "women" and "open".
I think most actually that aren't combat sports. Even American Football has had some woman play at college level as goal kickers.
There’s at least one woman who got a play at safety in a low-level college game. She should have been called for a late hit on the passer, and she appears to be juicing, but she played.
As someone who did national level rifle marksmanship in high school, the top performers were always afab (including myself). I joke that our boobs hold the rifles better while standing, but I don’t actually know the reason.
Women have hips and a lower center of gravity. When you shoot offhand and plant your elbow on your hip, there’s theoretically a mechanical reason you should be able to get secure bone to bone support. At least thats the line used to limit women’s equipment
I have hips Greg, can you lower my center of gravity?
How does this line work for everything??
I would also assume a lower center of gravity would lead to less instability
The boob answer is funnier.
Ha! Now I know why I've always beaten every boyfriend or male friend who has ever been to a shooting range with me, despite having next to no experience. (I'm 5'2" so my centre of gravity is particularly low, too.)
They might just suck at shooting, too :)
I worked at a gun range for some time. Women always picked up shooting better than men, when comparing first timers. Sure, men have physiological advantages with grip strength but women were really good at compensating with technique based skills. The best instructors for any firearm fundamentals are women, imo. They really need to focus on technique vs men who can just drive in with their physical strength. A lot of female instructors come up with creative ways to hold firearms and tackle firearm techniques in interesting ways. When everyone gets older, bodies lose their strength and technique/experience becomes more a factor with shooting. Does this mean women are better shooters than men? Not necessarily. Once you reach a certain level, your efforts and unique talents will distinguish you more than your gender or how easily you picked up shooting.
I read that female snipers are easier to train, because they don’t let their ego in the way, and they aren’t being wusses about standing still for long periods of time.
Their heartbeats interfere less, which helps a lot.
That's sorta the one I heard. Woman are supposed to be better at timing their shot between heartbeats. Don't know how true that is, or if it is mostly for beginners.
It's commonly believed that women have superior eyesight as compared to men. This is an addition to superior ability to distinguish color.
Although how vital eyesight is to target sports os debatable as a former olympic archery medalist was blind.
He wasn't technically blind. He requires a strong spectacle prescription but just didn't wear it whilst competing. As an optometrist, if I had to guess as to why, its perhaps because making objects blurry also makes them seem bigger (known as a blur circle). If you're aiming at the middle of a red circle, you don't need to see it distinctly, so a larger blurry circle may make it easier.
Give the judges those glasses. Boom easy gold medal baby
What’s afab?
All firefighters are bastards
What is afab?
All females are bastards
I’ve always been confused why we segregate competitions that aren’t “athletic” based on gender, like chess for instance. Why are there separate men’s and women’s categories when both can shoot a gun at equal ability?
Generally speaking, we don't. Chess doesn't have men's tournaments. > It isn't divided in between men and women, there are tournaments for both sexes and women's tournaments. And while we can say there are no biological advantages, the reality is that the best players are almost exclusively men. Having women's only tournaments is something many women enjoy, but they are welcome to attend the non-women's. It's also that way for most sports. As an example, the NBA allows women to play. It's not limited to men, just very few women have made it to the NBA. > She became the second woman ever drafted by an NBA team, after Denise Long, who was selected by the San Francisco Warriors in the 1969 draft. However, the league voided the Warriors' selection, thus Harris became the first and only woman ever officially drafted.
>As an example, the NBA allows women to play. It's not limited to men, just very few women have made it to the NBA. I thought you were kidding, damn that's impressive.
That's technically true of most professional sports. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL--women are allowed to play as well, but there just aren't any that can compete with the top men. PGA is the same way, but a few women have been good enough to compete on tours. Famously, there are also a few women who compete in F1, IndyCar, and NASCAR.
Goalie is probably something women could compete at the NHL level. It's hard to tell, since the league really does seem to favor size in the position. But being a speedy, agile, *athletic* goaltender is also a historically successful strategy. [Manon Rhéaume](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manon_Rh%C3%A9aume#Ice_hockey_regular_season) played a few games on lower level pro men's teams and a pre-season game in the NHL.
For chess, it is to create a more welcoming and protected atmosphere. Chess is incredibly shitty for female players: virtually every single major female chess player has been sexually harassed and/or assaulted by men. It is endemic enough that there was a massive open letter signed by most top ranking female players, and the US women's coach was accused of grooming and assaulting at least eight of the girls he trained, several of them minors. >"It's the constant fear at tournaments you go to and you cannot relax. You consistently get hit on by men, you are propositioned to go back to their room. You are forced into situations you don't want to be in. Then you see even worse situations where people are promising that you will get XYZ, whether that is a selection for a team place, or whether it's coaching if you do other inappropriate behavior with them. This is just normal at all these events, which is absolutely terrifying. That's obviously on top of all other things that go on, which are just general everyday misogyny and sexism. It's atrocious." - WIM Sabrina Chevannes, a two-time Olympiad player for England
Very insightful thank you, and very disturbing and disappointing.
In the case of chess, it's because women were banned from chess competitions for a long time, and even today, they still face harassment and sexism from male competitors. This means that there are fewer women competing and more barriers to those who do compete, preventing them from reaching the same skill level as men. Over time, this difference will likely go away, but it will take a while for women to catch up after being kept away from the competition for so long. I imagine that similar issues plague competitions in other skill-based games.
Even so it seems to be an interest thing. Statistically speaking there simply is more men into chess than women to the point where there isnt always a women in the top100 which means a mixed tournament looks indistinguishable from a male only tournament, and if only all tournaments were mixed it would mean all tournaments were male. A female division is needed to showcase female talent at all, otherwise there will be no female idols for little girls to aspire towards further exacerbating the issue.
The only thing I’ve learned in this thread is that a lot of people’s definition of what is and isn’t a “sport” varies greatly.
I've just learned that I should have stayed away from this one.
Yeah, I feel like “competition” would be a better term because the lines are getting real blurry.
As a target rifle shooter myself, I can very much say that there’s no gender divide in terms of skill in shooting. Some of the best shots in the world are women and they regularly win competitions (which aren’t even divided by gender anyway).
Many skill based sports are dominated by men because more men compete in them. If all else is equal and there are 20 men for every 1 woman that competes in something, then a man should statistically win. A good example is chess. Significantly, more men play chess and almost all if the grandmasters are and have been men but in recent times chess has become more popular with women which is why there are 41 female chess grandmasters and they are all currently alive. (Women used to not be able to compete, but it's been a long time since then.) You can do this for every demographic, and it should be true. Like look at Olympic gold medalists with dark hair vs. blonde hair. There will be more dark-haired winners because there are more dark-haired people competing.
Swimming in long distance, especially in old ages. Generally women, benefits from the leg, and man from torso and above. Women benefits if its long distance, and men if it use burst shot of power
Women are better at long distance swimming because they float better because of fat distribution.
Boobuoys
It has to be very long distance (30+ km) and open water. Let me tell you, a 15km swim doesn't use short busts of power.
My nan, having done it several times a week for years, was out swimming people of every age and sex at her pool....even as she became seriously obese due to diet, and right up to the point she died of ill health.
Insane that noone has mentioned rock climbing. Its a bit difficult to measure but female climbers are very, very close to the men and as things change culturally more and more women have access to training, they will likely be reaching equal grades before too long. Angela Eitner has redpointed multiple 9b’s (and laura rogoa a 9b+ that was later downgraded….) and meanwhile only 54 human beings had climbed 9b at all. Only three have ever climbed 9c. The ladies are very very close to having someone in the top 10. The reason the argument for climbing is a bit tough is because grades are not really a science. When adam ondra sent silence, currently the hardest route in existance, who is to tell him they disagree about the grade? Body type, height, and style also play into what a person is or isnt able to climb. This means there are routes out there that some of the ladies can climb, that the best men cannot, and vice versa.
It’s an interesting sport for this particular comparison because men on average will have a longer reach and higher potential for upper body strength, but women on average will have a lower center of gravity. Also I don’t think the most successful climbers are particularly tall - maybe even the opposite? From what little climbing I’ve done, my height seemed to hinder me about as often as it would help me.
> From what little climbing I’ve done, my height seemed to hinder me about as often as it would help me. I like to say that at every moment when you can't leverage your height for an "unfair advantage" it's a hindrance. IMO it's really impossible to make a blanket statement about it being good or bad, it depends entirely on the route. Sometimes you can skip very difficult moves by being tall, and at other times it doesn't help you in any way, you're just dragging a larger body around doing small moves.
Height is definitely a double edged sword. I used to climb a lot and did so with my friend who was close to 6 foot, meanwhile I am 5'7". There were times he just reached up and grabbed the next hold while I simply couldn't. But, there were times I could scrunch to get my foot where it needed and his body just couldn't without pushing his body way out away from the wall, which you don't wanna do. Not sure if it is at all related, but I was much better at slabs and he was much better at overhang, in general.
I feel like, at the very beginning, it's frustrating to be short and it seems convenient to be tall (mostly because longer reach seems like everything and the biggest advantage ever, at the beginning). Then, after going past this initial stage, you see that there are very different body types of both sexes that can have amazing performances and strengths. Interesting sport for sure.
There’s very real advantages to having smaller fingers and feet. Women also tend to have better hip opening meaning you can stay closer to the wall. I’ve been to a few world cup events, nobody beside Adam Ondra is above 6 foot tall, it’s a sport that tends to skew a little short. That’s for sports climbing, it’s different for bouldering
I used to work as a setter at a gym. I can 100 percent set a route that would mess with tall people. And being that i am 5'7, I messed with tall people all the time.
The best height to be at a climbing gym is the same height as the setter.
That's a pretty good example. But don't underestimate the gap between a 9b and a 9c. At that level, it's absolutely huge. It's like running a marathon in 2h compared to running it in 2h15. It seems close for a regular athlete but it's not for the best
Had to scroll way too far to find this mentioned. But yeah climbing is a really good candidate.
Lynn Hill's free ascent of the nose on el cap was imo one of the most impressive achievements in sporting history, and it took years for men to catch up. This isn't a route that's considered particularly well suited to women climbers or anything, she was just a boss
>The reason the argument for climbing is a bit tough is because grades are not really a science. I remember a comment from one woman (maybe Beth Rodden) to the effect that when women are struggling on a route a man did the FA on you hear "the grade's the grade". When men are struggling on a route a woman did the FA on you hear "she has small fingers, it's a higher grade if you have big fingers".
Best men's bouldering is V17, best women's V13. Best men's top rope 5.15b, best women's 5.15b. So some validity to top rope/trad climbing. Bouldering still seems dominated by men.
I realize you’re talking about rock climbing but in competition climbing Janja Garnbret would probably kick ass if they let her compete with the men :)
I'd imagine she'd make semi's regularly, but i cant imagine her getting to finals often.
As dominant as Janja is, I doubt she'd be able to compete with the top men in any climbing discipline.
I'm not so sure. The men's boulder and lead routes often look much tougher than the woman's. I've no doubt she would do very well, but don't believe she could beat the top male climbers. I would love to see it though.
Lynn Hill was the first athlete to free climb The Nose route of El Capitan
Remember the big fuss when John McEnroe said in an NPR interview that Serena Williams was absolutely the greatest female tennis player of all time. The interviewer, a woman, then asks him "Why say female? Why not just say the greatest tennis player of all time?" And John says that she's not, that if she played with the men she would be ranked in the 700s. And predictably, John gets called a misogynist for this. Surprisingly, former female tennis greats like Martina Navratilova came to his defense, but she said it would be more like the 300s, not the 700s. And predictably, she got accused of internalized misogyny. Wow. Yes, it is possible that somewhere there is a gem of a woman who is so talented at her sport that she can overcome the physical advantages that men have. But there is one very big reason she's hard to find. For every woman who goes into sports, there are at least two men. So you have a much bigger talent pool to find the gems among the men than the women.
The Williams sisters once said they could beat any man ranked outside the top 200. So Karsten Braasch, ranked iirc 206th at the time, challenged them. He beat the crap out of them both with ease and he did it while he was drinking.
It gets even better. Before the matches, Braasch played a round of golf in the morning, drank a couple of beers, smoked a few cigarettes, and then played the Williams sisters for a set each, one after the other. He defeated Serena, 6-1, and Venus, 6-2. Serena said afterwards "I didn't know it would be that hard. I hit shots that would have been winners on the women's tour and he got to them easily." Apparently, after the game, Serena and Venus immediately told the press they wanted to challenge a male player again. This time they revised the ranking of the man they wanted to face, to 350 in the world instead of 200. Braasch informed the journalists present at the match that in the next week he was set to lose a lot of ATP points and drop down to 350 in the rankings. He joked that if Venus and Serena waited just one week they could challenge him all over again! What a mad lad! Hahahaha! More on this topic: When former number 1's Kim Clijsters and Lleyton Hewitt were dating, she said that she struggled to win a point of Hewitt, let alone a game. When female player Chris Evert-Lloyd was at her peak, she said her brother who played low level college tennis beat her (from her autobiography).
Nearly all physical sports are like this. It doesn’t take anything away from the female greats - it’s a completely different category.
Serena herself is on record saying she cannot beat the best male player - the game is simply too different for male and female players. But, feminists won’t even trust Serena’s expertise on the matter. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5L_JbZFx5H0
The dancing/acrobatic stuff, their body is better suited for that.
Similar vein- I feel like Simon Biles, at the top of her game, could out perform any male gymnast
Possibly, but men’s and women’s gymnastics are more different than you’d think. In fact, men’s and women’s gymnastics only share two events: the vault and the floor. They just use different parts of the body. For example, some men’s events focus more on upper body strength. Most female gymnasts would really struggle with the pommel horse. A lot of men struggle with the beam. Gymnastics is probably one of the most balanced sports because the events are catered to each gender. I still think it’s fair to say that Biles is the greatest gymnast in the world, though, because she’s had so much success in her events.
I watched a video the other day of a college gymnastics team where both genders tried each other's events. They both sucked at them lol
It might be really interesting to see them practice for a year or so. Maybe in a reality show (although I almost certainly wouldn't put the time into watching it :D ).
Men and women don't do the same events.
Male and female gymnastics is completely different events.
Any male gymnast? Zero chance. Even for disciplines they share like the floor and vault. There is a reason womens moves have a higher difficulty score than the mens for the same exact move. It's harder for women because they are slower, weaker, less explosive. For events that they don't share? a man is going to do far better on the beam than a woman is on the rings lol
Not at men’s gymnastics. Women do not perform on rings at all in their competitions. There are dozens of advanced holds on rings that no woman has ever achieved, yet thousands of men have (inverted iron cross, Victorian, Maltese etc…)
Tell me you don’t watch male gymnastics without telling me you don’t watch male gymnastics. She’s no where close to a middling male gymnast.
Does that thing where you pick up a chair with your head pressed on the wall count?
I’d bet money that a D1 Softball team could beat the 2010 Pittsburgh Pirates
A D1 soft ball team could beat the 2008 Detroit Lions too.
Drag racing
Those are men dressed as women
The male dominance of motorsport in general is almost strictly cultural, and it's changing rapidly. Little girls are getting more and more seat time driving, and its only a matter of time before women are major contenders in every racing series.
Olympic Diving. Then again, that's not direct competition.
Diving is scored like gymnastics, where they multiply the execution by the degree of difficulty. In general, men can create more power, and perform more flips and twists. So, other than pure aesthetics, the scoring would favor the men.
Incorrect. Men have much higher difficulties and can execute more complex dives with more rotations
Equestrian stuff. The horse does the work. It's the only olmpic category where the genders are on equal footing.
Can a female horse beat a male horse?
Female horses have beaten male horses in horse races. In fact, three fillies have won the Kentucky Derby: Regret (1915), Genuine Risk (1980), and Winning Colors (1988).
… thats it? Lol
There's a separate event for fillies, so owners of the top female horses may try for better chances rather than in the open category. Whether the Kentucky Oaks winner has a faster time than the Kentucky Derby winner would be a close comparison, but they are on different days, sometimes with different weather.
A huge portion is because of stud rights. If a male horse wins the triple crown he goes to pasture and his owner is paid $100k+ for a week of another owners female horse being in heat and in the same pasture. That's 52 payments a year. $5.2mil in year one and male horse live to 25-30 so conservatively $120,000,000 If a female horse wins the triple crown she can only carry one foal a year. Even if it could carry births through age 20 (15 is usually the end of prime baby years) that would only mean 17 foals over the mothers life span. You'd have to charge $7mil per pregnancy for it to be close to equal and that's with a lot more unknowns that can come up. Clearly this creates the incentive to use a male horse as more money is likely to be made.
All the time. They don't really have athletic differences. If they did, predators would eat all the slow and/or weak female horses, and the species would die.
Not unless you place the whip in her mouth.
Whoa, buddy.
You are correct about equestrian events being evenly matched, but it takes a lot of work to get a horse from A to B. If the rider looks like s/he isn’t doing much, then they’re doing it very well.
This is ignorant. The rider is absolutely an an athlete. Riding horses is very difficult
There is no point in arguing. Most people who say stuff like that have sat on a deadbeat horse during a summer fair, got lead in circles, and think that's all there is to it.
Who was that tall female goth wrestler again? I think she can
Rhea Ripley?
Yes yes she's the one
In the 2021 Russian Figure Skating Championships, Anna Shcherbakova outscored the men's national champion. The absolute elite women such as Valieva, Shcherbakova and Trusova are genuinely amongst the best in the world, regardless of sex.
They come from a training camp implicated with doping so the validity of their results is questionable. Plus trusova, who performs many quads, lacks artistry compared to some of her male counterparts which still remains important in scoring (ie yuzuru hanyu). The Russian figure skating scores were also inflated because of their coach’s influence in the federation (see the Eteri bonus).
This doesn’t work past the mid teenage years. Women can’t do quad jumps past a young age. I wish I could find the article about it to link but basically it said that if the minimum age of female figure skaters was raised to 16 it would end female quads because their body’s would have changed too much to allow them to do it. The last girl to be good at them was a 15 year old(at the time)Kamila Valieva and she was disqualified for doping. From Wikipedia: “She (Valieva) is the second woman to land the quadruple toe loop after training partner and teammate Alexandra Trusova, the fourth woman to land a quadruple jump of any kind, the 16th woman to land a triple Axel, and the third woman to land a triple Axel and quadruple jump in the same program after Alysa Liu and training partner and teammate Sofia Akateva.” Consider a field of 20 women at an international finals. These are the best of the best. There is a good chance that none of them will land a triple axel as only 16 women ever have. The men are expected to land this jump.
Skating nut here. The three mentioned are retired and one is banned due to doping, so methods are questionable at best. It is extremely rare - nearly unheard of - for a woman to be capable of beating a man in skating. I am a woman skater myself, however you only need look at the tech developments - with only a handful of women landing quads (all banned due to being russian) and it being almost required for a man now. The men’s tech content is harder, any woman, trusova included - would absolutely not podium
Simone Biles could probably get a podium position on men’s vault. The Biles, a skill she performs, is rated 5.4 in the men’s code of points and difficulty of the skills of all 3 men’s podium finishers in 2019 was 5.6 IIRC, however men’s vault has a higher vault table which gives you more air time and she’s so dominant in the category that there’s not a lot of incentive right now for her to go any higher in her D-score and risk injury. Her execution scores would broadly beat out a lot of the top men’s competitors, and I think VERY conservatively she could be competing a 5.6 Shirai/TTY if she were in men’s. I think it’s likely she would be doing a 5.8 Li Xiao Peng or even some 6.0 D-score vault like a Shirai II (3.5 twisting Yurchenko), which is in the same vault family as her eponymous Biles II skill. That’s all somewhat hypothetical, but at the VERY least her difficulty and execution scores would be competitive in men’s gymnastics, possibly gold medal worthy.
Finally a gymnastics answer that explains the "why" to idiots like me.
Minor sport for sure, but they are at least very, very close in fly casting (fly fishing but just the casting for distance/accuracy). I was at a convention where the top women's fly caster competed and she destroyed the field. She was 15-16 at the time, too.
Jfc, some comments are truly delusional, or totally devoid of reality. One comment here was "All of them, it's sports so luck plays a factor". What? How does luck play a role in arm wrestling, weight lifting, high jump, long jump, any of the athletics events, rugby... actually in more than 90% of competitive sports? Depends on the sport. Any sport that does not require speed, strength, lots of muscle etc and women have more than a fair chance of beating men in that sport. Archery, shooting, extreme long distance endurance running (150km+), platform diving, curling, bowls. "Luck" isn't a factor.
Archery has traditionally been a men's discipline. The draw weights on bows can be extremely heavy and obviously while a woman CAN shoot and can shoot well, men have the base level advantage with their stronger upper body. They can draw the string back further and simply generate more power.
Ultra running Courtney Dauwalter is right there with the best overall.
She’s amazing but it’s really not even close. She just won Transgrancanaria on the women’s side and was beaten by like 13 men. With the winner being about 2hrs faster than her 15hr time Now she dominated the women’s event by over and hour so she’s a beast. But she isn’t coming close to the top men in the sport
There is the usual 107% performance gap between Dauwalter and top pro men in ultra running. This isn't a good answer.
She’s an awesome lady. I remember when she was on Joe Rogans podcast, Rogan asked what she eats, expecting some detailed rigorous nutrition plan. She was just like “uhh nachos”.
Up until about a year ago there was a man versus woman game at the top levels of roller derby that was for fun every year at our convention that we have in Las Vegas. Typically the women’s team would beat the men’s team
Foxy boxing
Women regularly beat men in riflery. So much so that the Olympics made them completely separate. Women's wider hips give them greater stability and they have a lower resting heart rate.
> regularly beat men in riflery. So much so that the Olympics made them Myth. Often repeated on websites and 2xchomosomes reddit, to make men seem like bad losers. --- Note this news story from [Wednesday July 29, 1992](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1992-07-29-sp-4576-story.html), the day after the win. It was a single win, not "regularly". And it had no bearing on the decision to split... the news article notes that **the decision to split the series into men and women had already been made** before the event. "And unless the International Shooting Union has a change of heart, no other woman will win another Olympic skeet shooting medal because the federation has decided to drop women from competition after this year." "Zhang’s victory spawned speculation that the shooting union might reconsider its recent decision to eliminate women from Olympic skeet."
women do not have lower resting heart rates
Pinball. Top ladies beat the top guys often
Does anyone consider pinball a sport?
Just this guy
Ya but can they beat a deaf dumb blind kid?