You’re correct, perhaps I should have used the word “realistic” instead of “reasonable” when talking about the winning chances. The idea is that a mixed shooting competition is realistically winnable (and has actually been won) by a female athlete, unlike for example running or weightlifting, not that the winning chances would be even nearly equal for women (at lest currently). It’s indeed true that as it stands now, separate events are much better than a mixed competition where there would usually be just one woman in top ten. Additionally, a mixed competition might even further discourage women from participation, leading to an almost all-male sport again.
In women’s shooting events there seems to be less consistency of good results. So in these olympics Kim Rhode equaled the world record held by Danka Barteková and reached a better hit percentage than any of the male competitors. But at the same time, Barteková missed 5 in qualification sets and another 5 in the final sets, and still came third with a result of just 90 of 100 shots. Men’s competition was on higher level with everyone in top six getting at least 143 of 150. So one has to wonder if these differences are explained by societal factors like unequality in participation or practice (after all, many sports where men don’t have the obvious physical advantages like motorized sports or chess are still held to be primarily male pastimes, and this is true for shooting also) or are there indeed some actual physical gender differences affecting accuracy and fatigue.
The next winter Olympics is likely to have mixed curling, but that is not the same as women competing against men (where it is clear they don’t stand a chance, I don’t know why). Unfortunately, they are talking about a bastard version called mixed doubles, which is not real curling.
Ordinary mixed curling is a nice game. Men and women are required to alternate and a team has a strategic decision: MWMW or vice versa. In the first case, you get the superior sweeping ability of the men, while in the second, you likely have a better player throwing the all-important last rock. I believe that MWMW is more common.
Another (presumably on equal ground) set of comparable male/female stats: sand saves, PGA Tour vs. LPGA. Male golfers have always had a small but significant edge-c. 5 percentage points in the case among the top ten.
I agree completely with this and the rest of your post.
In something like shooting we could, now and again, see the objectively judged “best” marksman in the world, be a woman. That’d be a great story and a superb achievement. I’m torn between keeping it mixed and allowing such great stories to occur albeit infrequently, whilst knowing that the rarity of female success may keep people away from that sport.
Surprised to see that the USA is so lopsided by swimming. They have won less gold medals than GB in all other events. They have won over half their medals in only one discipline.
Personally I think there are far, far too many swimming events. Can’t see why different styles are a good reason for a totally separate classification. There should just be freestyle, do what the heck you want. Have a few variations of length and some relays and cut the medals down to 16 at most. (there are 32 at the moment)
That’s why there will always be debate over the relative greatness of Michael Phelps. Sure he has won twice as many golds as Carl Lewis but then at each games he has twice as many events realistically open to him.
The same is true of gymnastics. You get many multiple medal winners because they have 7 or 8 opportunities for gold every games.
So I’d put Lewis and Phelps on a level personally. Both great no doubt, but Phelps as greatest ever? Not to me.
Because only 1 of the 100 better chess players is female. And it is the same that happen in all the levels. I havent heard about any tournment anywhere where men are let to compete and a women have won it. As a matter of fact the mens tournments are always free tournments (the girls can participate too), but in the womens tournments the males cant participate.
men and women are equaly represented in chess nationals because dont compete together. Its exactly the same that happen in the Olimpiads. their levels are very differents but it doesnt matter for let them participate because women only compete between them.
Even at the same weight, men have more strength than women, have more muscle, bigger hearth and lungs, more red blood cells, more testosterone, more advantageous mechanical bone structure and less fat; you only need look at the weight lifting to check this, for example in london olimpiads in the 68kg male category the gold medal was with a total of 344kg, and in the 69kg female category the gold medal was with a total of 261kg. You cant know how good are the girls wrestling until the best girls compete against the best boys in this sport. I think women dont have possibility to win against the best men, but here is the only way to prove it in a national mixed gender league.
About Archery, as far as I know th men tend to have better visual-spatial abilities; the fact is that in teams archery in London olimpiads, in the competence for the gold for males, the teams made 219 and 218 points, and in the competence for bronze for males, the teams made 224 and 219 points. In other hand, in the competence for gold medal for females, the teams made 210 and 209 points, and in the competence for bronze for females, the teams made 209 and 207 points. If you check the individual archery and see the gold medal and bronze medal competences for males and females, you ll see the next average of points per shooting for each competitor the day of the competence:
gold medal for men: 115/12 = 9.58 gold medal for women: 135/15 = 9
silver medal for men: 108/12 = 9 silver medal for women: 129/15 = 8,6
bronce medal for men: 137/15 = 9.13 bronce medal for women: 104/12 = 8,66
fourth place for men: 136/15 = 9.06 fourth place for women: 98/12 = 8,16
That you read about in ultra long distance running women actually have an advantage is a total myth, and you ll never see it in a serious study or experiment, and its the same for long distances swimming.
I dont know nothing about Ski jumping, but I doubt women can jump the same the men; you wont see a woman jumping more than a man neither in athletics, nor in gymnastics, nor in diving. As a matter of fact if you check the final of vault in gymnastics for men and women in the London olimpiads, you ll see that the difficult of the vaults for men are in general higher that the women vaults (over 7 vs over 6 of difficulty); just the same that happen in diving (over 3,5 vs over 3 of difficulty).
About the chess player the only known woman that is really exceptional is Judit Polgár, but even she never were the first place in the ranking.
“unlike for example running or weightlifting, not that the winning chances would be even nearly equal for women (at lest currently)”
these differences are big and biological, came from millions of years ago in our evolution, it is clear that it wont change, at least in millions of years.
“It’s indeed true that as it stands now, separate events are much better than a mixed competition where there would usually be just one woman in top ten”
in deed in almost all the competences, any woman is light years behind the top ten.
“In women’s shooting events there seems to be less consistency of good results. So in these olympics Kim Rhode equaled the world record held by Danka Barteková and reached a better hit percentage than any of the male competitors.”
to say that Kim Rhode won over Hancock Vincent (the gold medal in the male category in london olimpiads for skeeting) is pretty tendentious because you are taking his fourth 25 shoots of the classification instead his 25 shoots of the final for complete his 100 shoots, if we take his first 75 shoots more his final shoots he makes 99 points that is the same Kim Roche made. Anyway I get your point.
“(after all, many sports where men don’t have the obvious physical advantages like motorized sports or chess are still held to be primarily male pastimes, and this is true for shooting also) or are there indeed some actual physical gender differences affecting accuracy and fatigue”
well, I think that these differences exist but are much smaller than other kind of differences like these you mentioned. It is not coincidence that women tend to be better placed in relation with men when the competence is in fix targets more than when the targets are moving. The reason is that women have developed through the history fine motor skills and precision in moves that not require strenght, maybe in activities like knitting; that help the womens accuracy; but in other hand men always have developed more physical, visual-spatial abilities and sensibility to motion, maybe in activities like hunting. I think that its explain too why women are less good in gun than in rifle, because the gun is in only one hand and need maintain the presicion applying pressure over the gun.
I’m late to this party, but there is still a large disparity between men’s and women’s chess, and larger still if you take one unique woman out of the equation. Polgar’s phenomenally good and has beaten current and past World Champions during her career, but is both the only woman in the world’s top ten and the only woman in the top hundred.
By comparison, the standout female player in history before the Polgars was Vera Menchik, but though she had many male scalps to her credit (those who lost to her were said to have joined the “Vera Menchik Club”, whose founder member was ironically the very man who sarcastically proposed it idea) she normally placed very poorly in open tournaments. On the other hand, she annihilated the best female opposition to at least the same extent as she was herself overpowered by male GMs.
Whether the world’s best will ever be a woman is still very much open to question, and discussion usually begins by begging the question: stating as fact that men and women must be equally innately gifted at the game.
Stevenson married British Ladies Champion Lawson, who was killed by a plane’s propellor. He later married Women’s World Champion Menchik, who (after his passing) was killed by a V-1.
Methinks that top female chess players and things that fly do not get along together.
The other day while watching a women’s basketball game, a co-worker of mine asked me, “Why don’t they just have the U.S. men and the U.S. women play against each other?”
I responded, “Because the first time LeBron James fouls a girl, people will hate him even more than they already do.”
Not really. Reaction time isn’t quite as fast. Split seconds make all the difference in fencing.
But the truth is, in my opinion, that we don’t know, yet. Women being encouraged to explore their athletic ability is still pretty new, and not without controversy. Maybe in a few generations the men’s slope of improvement will have flattened quite a bit more and, if the women continue improving steadily, they could end up being a lot closer in many events.
And Sir Steve Redgrave (rowing) in five consecutive Olympics, the only person to do it in an endurance sport.
Not that I’m making any outright claim of supremacy over Phelps or Lewis et al, merely adding to the argument that “greatest Olympian” is a tricky beast to pin down.
Aladar Gerevich brought home six consecutive fencing golds – made more impressive by dint of WWII getting the Olympics cancelled in '40 and '44, which means he did it every time anybody had a shot at those medals for twenty-eight years straight, from 1932 through 1960. (And, coming back around to the OP: if he was still that good as a man in his fifties, substituting skill for speed, then is it so unthinkable that a woman decades younger could do likewise?) (And before you argue that Gerevich must have been some kind of freaky outlier, note that his fencing countrymen got their fourth and fifth consecutive golds at forty and forty-eight.)