Professional bowling had a woman win a mans tournament a couple years ago. The womens tour died and some women competed on the mens tour.
It is also likely the closest sport between amateurs and pros. There are lots of league bowlers averaging close to 220. They can bowl in the pro tour when it comes to town if the pay the entry. They don’t win but they do often cash.
And certainly there is no mental reason or motoring skill deficiency why women can’t compete alongside men. Regarding rallying, Michelle Mouton was a sight to behold in her quattro and competed on perfectly level terms.
The problem comes when the physical demands become higher. Such as F1, only then would you expect women to be less able to compete.
Also, various professional equestrian sports allow equal competition and certainly in such as show-jumping women do very well.
Computer simulation racing champion alllmost does really well…
http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/geek-rebooted-2010-11-26?imageNo=0
…but he pukes in his helmet. Racing is not your typical puttering around the country.
I don’t think they mention it, but since he can’t even get the tires hot enough to stick on his first try, they put rain tires on the car so he has a chance to make it stick.
Huttu is one of sim racing’s (in)famous “aliens” I alluded to above-at one time he held the track records for a number of Grand Prix Legends circuits. While he did pretty well getting around the track, note how he realized that he would have to be in better shape to do a full-length race (in case someone wants to try arguing again that race drivers aren’t athletes). Another iRacing alien, John Prather, tried a touring car race awhile back-and finished dead last.
The gap is enormous in ALL sports- it just FEELS less enormous in sports like bowling and golf.
That is, most of us KNOW there’s no chance we’d complete a single pass if we had to line up under center in Peyton Manning’s place. Most of us KNOW we’d never ever get a piece of a Randy Johnson fastball, if we were at the plate.
But even a so-so weekend golfer may have one afternoon when he’s on fire, when he shoots a 67 at a top-notch course, and thinks “You know, for this ONE afternoon, I could have held my own with Martin Kaymer.”
In the same way, a top player in a Wednesday night bowling league might bowl an occasional 245, and think “I could’ve beaten Earl Anthony tonight.”
But that’s all it is- one night, or one afternoon. Both guys have to know, deep down, that they couldn’t possibly shoot a 68 or roll a 245 consistently. And THAT’S what it takes to be a pro. A top pro bowler has to score 240 or more EVERY TIME, if he wants to be a champion. Phil Mickelson has to put together 4 consecutive great days to win at Augusta.
Even the best 'regular folks" can’t do that.
Especially considering since he’s been dead 10 years. 
I didn’t know that, but I’m not surprised. My problem is, I haven’t paid the slighest attention to pro bowling since the early Eighties, so ANY pro bowler I named would be way out of date. I couldn’t name a current bowling champ to save my life, and was too lazy to look one up.
Is Mark Roth alive? Johnny Petraglia? You get the idea… I’m way behind the times when it comes to bowling.
The thing that annoys me with the Formula1 answer is we’re mostly talking about the difficulty of learning a piece of equipment.
I’d also probably suck at driving a truck and trailer, without training and practice. Does that mean there’s a huge gap between me and a truck driver?
Read my post #38 again-despite honing my skills for years in sim racing, there’s still people out there who will drive circles around me. If a track has 10 corners, and they are a mere .1 faster through each, that’s one full second per lap I am losing. No not a “huge” gap, but huge enough.
I suspect you are not an F1 fan. Your comparison is not reasonable at all.
The top formula 1 guys are barely mortal. (Senna was certainly of that mindset)
Learning the equipment is nothing. The hamster was able to get the thing moving.
It is the physical forces at work while trying to operate that machinery. Those are the key. The sustained G forces are like nothing you have ever felt.
Imagine the most intense roller coaster you have ever been on, pick the most forceful loop and imagine re-running it every 10 seconds for an hour and a half, while operating all the processes of an F1 car and trying keep brain-space enough to formulate a plan and attack or defend.
The difference between driving an ordinary road car and truck is trivial compared to driving an F1 car at anything close to competition speeds.
They are still alive, though Roth has had some health problems(a stroke, I believe) and did not look very good last month at the Mark Roth Plastic Ball Championship.
Some women have managed to compete with the men, the lovely Kelly Kulick even won a PBA tour title. That said, only a few have managed it, and they are the very best female bowlers in the world. You are correct that a fair number of league bowlers average 220+. I know several that average 230+ and have many 300 games. The vast majority of those league bowlers can’t come close to competing with the pros. The difference between bowling a 250 on the house oil pattern at your local lanes compared to bowling a 250 on the oil pattern on the lanes at a PBA tour is similar to shooting a -5 at your local mini-golf course compared to shooting a -5 at Pebble Beach. Not only do you need to be able to make that jump, but you have to do it every game. House oil patterns are created to help the bowler to some extent. They can take a shot where you miss your speed, revolutions, or the spot you were aiming at(by as much as 6-8 inches in some circumstances) and funnel that ball into the pocket for a strike. On the other hand, if you mess up any of those while bowling on a professional level oil pattern, even if you only miss your spot by an inch, you’ll miss the pocket. Probably badly. Whenever you bowl at your local lanes it may seem easy, but the conditions are not even close to the same as what the pros bowl on.
Wow - great clip. Really makes me want to try to get in one of those dual-seat cars at the IMS to experience those kinds of speeds. The most fascinating thing is “I’ll get more control if I go faster”. Such an amazing learning curve.
FWIW, and I completely agree with your other points on bowling, Pebble Beach is really not that hard of a course. It’s in fact the easiest of the three full-sized courses the Pebble Beach Company owns on the Monterey Peninsula, with Spyglass Hill and Spanish Bay being the other two. Spyglass in particular is extremely brutal. (Del Monte Golf Course isn’t on the Peninsula) The exception is when they set Pebble up for a U.S. Open, and the weather decides to be unpleasant. Of course, all courses that are set up for a U.S. Open are going to be mind-bendingly difficult. See,the Golf Digest contest where amateurs try to break 100 on an U.S. Open Course.
As far as the OP, the various shooting sports come to mind. Granted, you need a handicap system in order to compete fairly, but once that’s established, it’s just you against the target, not directly against the shooter. It’s not like golf where there are simply some shots a pro can hit that you can’t (mega forced carries and the like). This isn’t to say that what Olympic class shooters do is easy—their precision borders on inhuman—but I’m capable of shooting a 120 round 3-position course. I’m just not going to do it anywhere close to 1180. If I keep them all in the black, I’d be having a great day. And, as Margaret Murdock can tell you, it’s a sport where men and women can compete as equals.
According to Jerry Seinfeld, the luge is the only sport where you could have people competing in it against their will, and it would look exactly the same.
Snooker is a very hard sport to play. I think in terms of absolutely not being able to compete that’s were you’d find a huge difference between a decent ‘leisure player’ and a professionalplayer.
I’m only an okay pub pool player, but I’ve taken a frame off an England international pool player (Infact I think I may’ve taken a frame off another England interntional too, but I can’t rightly remember). Snooker is a game I’ve spent a decent amount of time practicing, but I think against a professional snooker player I’d be lucky to score a single point in a match.
How long did the hamster have in the formula1 car?
Because the edit certainly made it look like he’d driven a formula 4 and 2 car for the first time, then got a chance to drive the formula 1 car at the end of the same day.
This is not what I’d consider sufficient training and practice to learn the equipment.
I’m not saying formula 1 is easy and any schlub could compete in it – far from it. But I don’t think it’s fair to imply that it (or other forms of racing) are the hardest because a person sat in a formula1 car for the first time would screw up. Of course they would – because there’s a complex piece of equipment you must first learn.
But coming to your point, I agree that racers have to have a high tolerance / stamina, fast reactions and be extremely brave. But it’s only really reactions that I could see actually selecting out the pros from the amateurs.
e.g. If you watch any amateur race, extreme recklessness / bravery seem to be common traits.
At the Formula 1 level it’s a very controlled recklessness. The driver is subjected to 5 G’s during cornering and sometimes more during breaking. F1 drivers undergo strength training specifically targeting their shoulder and neck muscles for this reason. Even if you had the stamina, reactions, and bravery you would have a hard time keeping the air in your lungs racing at competitive speeds without training.
Also, the big teams spend around $400 million a year on their programs. Since we’re talking about being competitive as an amateur, also consider the damage that an unskilled driver can do to an improperly operated F1 car.
F1 regulations stipulate:
Trashing the gearbox or wrecking engines would really limit your ability to compete.
Jon Smoltz, probable future Baseball Hall of Famer, is playing in a minor league golf event this weekend in South Georgia. he is an accomplished golfer, reported to be one of the best golfers who played another pro-sport on a high level.
He shot 84 in the first round, 18 shots behind the leader, 4 shots behind the guy who is next to last. Round 1 is not completed yet (delayed because of bad weather) but it is probable that he will be in last place after Round 1 is completed.
I am very good amateur golfer. My handicap has hovered between 1 and 5 for most of the last 15 years. I routinely beat 99% of the players at my country club.
The difference in my game and the best golfers in the world is huge. Tremondous. I have played with journeyman pros. There is no way I can compete with them consistently, let alone the best players.
I could have sworn I saw a topic about this that was less of a zombie, but my Google-Fu is failing me.
This article might be of interest to you. About an amateur who tries to qualify for the U.S. Open.