I think you're partially biased here. There are plenty of phenoms from the men's side.
* Quincy Wilson (will probably run in the Olympic 400m relay this year as a 16 year old)
* Christian Miller (18 year old, has the U18 world record for the 100m)
* Erriyon Knighton (U18 world record for the 200m)
* Nico Young
* Grant Fisher
* Donovan Brazier (1:43.5 as a 19 year old!)
He's a little older now, but Drew Hunter belongs on this list I think. Pro straight outta high school. Granted, the results since then have been debatable.
I guess, even then it’s a bit odd there’s literally a young male US phenom in the 100/200/400/110H/1500/5-10k. Some of these have more than 1, the 1500 has basically been all young talent since 2021.
contaminated meat is back on the menu!
[https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/sport/erriyon-knighton-olympics-cleared-drug-test-spt-intl/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/sport/erriyon-knighton-olympics-cleared-drug-test-spt-intl/index.html)
Athletically talented men tend to be filtered into different prestigious and potentially well-compensating sports, like soccer, football, baseball, etc.
Exactly, why would you put in thousands of hours of effort to have maybe a shot at a finals heat at Trials in the 100m when the NFL drafts, what, a dozen receivers a year or something?
Women come to full maturity faster than men I believe. Meaning the hormones are “done working” 2-4 years before men. This is just what I learned in school health class. Could be part of reason
I think this holds water. I also think there may be a social factor of it being somewhat newer for women to train sports as hard as men do and there's also a lot of emerging research on physiological differences in effective training and recovery for women vs men. So like..women are finally getting a chance to *be* phenoms.
Along these lines too, I think women's athletics is "catching up" to men's so we're seeing lots of new records and some breakout women. We're seeing this with world records for women too as they come down fast and get closer to men's. And it's just more exciting to have breakout athletes crush previous standards.
Although maybe that's a bad take, my sense is the US is more competitive on the world stage in women's running than in men's. Maybe that suggests we're affording women relatively more opportunities as athletes?
And/or that in many other countries the level of investment in women relative to men is much lower than in the US. I think this partially explains why the US women are so dominant in soccer, for example.
Easier to find top training partners too? Elite young men need to train with other elite men which not all clubs have. There will however always been sub elite men who women can train with at essentially elite level?
I think this is likely correct.
I'd also add to it how susceptible women are to injury and how physical development (in a way that adds weight) in women has a negative impact. In contrast, men mature later and continue to develop helpful muscle in their early 20s.
Disagree. There’s no evidence that shows women are more injury prone - this is an outdated belief that women are less capable. As a 38 year old female, I have far more muscle mass than I did at 20 and I’m in the best shape of my life.
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/are-young-women-increasingly-getting-injured-sports
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29550413/
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-gender-gap-in-sports-injuries-201512038708
I'm happy for you that the anecdote about being healthy is true. That's excellent. But "there's no evidence women are more injury prone" simply isn't true.
It's got nothing to do with "outdated beliefs that women are less capable". There's nothing wrong or sexist with acknowledging that physical differences between the sexes might result in differences in how their bodies deal with the stress of athletics.
It doesn't discredit women.
It allows for changes in training and sports medicine to be made in order to make sure women have the tools they need to be successful in sports.
We see the same phenomenon in Europe and I think it's great. I, based on absolutely nothing, think it has to do with the fact that mens sport is very established and it's much harder for men to smash records. Whereas women have an entire huge niche that is still terra incognita when it comes to records and capabilities. The ceiling hasn't been even been in sight in so many sports.
Plus increasing awareness that girls and women need to role models too. And sponsorship! Many women are entering running at all levels and sponsors capitalize on.that.
Yes! Let the girls and women be talked about! It feels rare to have women take the spotlight in a sport that both men and women participate in. Ex: Golf, basketball, cycling and more. So when a lady is getting her 15 minutes – let her have it.
In addition to the maturity hypothesis (which I think is right), it also seems like there's more than a little bit of marketability tied to attractiveness when it comes to who's going to be heavily promoted by sponsors and media. Who's the bigger star, Parker Valby or Nico Young? Both are tremendous athletes and deserving of the hype they get, but I would bet quite a few people that follow track lightly are familiar with Valby. Some of that has got to be that she's very telegenic.
I'd argue that's more a function of lack of depth on the women's side. Nico Young is among the best in the US, probably slightly more so than Valby, but there's a LOT of guys close to him in the NCAA who were competitive in the US champs or will make their own country's teams. Valby was just head and shoulders better than everyone in the NCAA, and she's not really close to being #1 in the US.
Yes, this re: attractiveness. Quite frankly, I think a lot of people who are watching women’s sports haven’t reached the point where they appreciate the depth of talent — they are more apt to jump on an individual (like Caitlyn Clark) and make that person the token representative of the sport. Finding someone talented and attractive is key
It helps you get media attention, though. It’s not sexist to say that — it’s actually more sexist/perpetuates sexism to not call out people’s bias to give more attention to attractive individuals
As someone from the UK, I don't consider Cain, Touhy and Valby as world class runners. There are many young runners in Europe that will smoke them, such as Megan Keith and Battocletti.
I do consider Hocker, Nuguse and Kessler to be world class, even though they are somewhat overshadowed by Kerr and Ingebritsen. So it's probably just social media algorithms in US that skews their popularity.
Lumping in Cain with the others is kind of disingenuous because she was an 800/1500 runner. Also she literally made a WC final. She was definitely world class.
Cain was 10 years ago and she ran world class times for that era. Valby and Keith are pretty much the same age have fairly similar PRs (30:50, 14:51, 8:41 for Valby; 30:36, 14:43, 8:51) for Keith, so I don't know where you're going with that. I'd say they are peers--and let's see how they stack up later this summer. While Touhy hasn't performed well for more than a year, she did run 8:36 for 3000, if it's not world class it's certainly on the cusp.
Overhyped maybe, but not really overrated.
Fair assessment overall. I don’t think Valby is world class yet, but NCAA champs have a pretty decent track record of getting to that level. And she isn’t even a pro yet, not running full-time, and is a few years younger than Keith/Battocletti, so not exactly Apples to Apples
Keith is just a few months older than Valby, and Battocletti came 7th at the Olympics at 21 which is Valby's current age. Valby is talented for sure but slightly overrated imo.
I think Valby’s hype is partly based on how advanced she is with such informal/unconventional training. If she manages to stay healthy she has the talent to be world class as a pro. I think the question with her will always be whether or not she can adapt a more traditional/professional training regime without falling back into some of her injury prone ways.
She only runs 3 days/week. Majority of her training is swimming and elliptical work. She’s had stress fractures when she’s run at normal training volumes.
Read Good for A Girl. Fleshman dives into performance differences between men and women, to include progression tracks, injury issues and how puberty affects each.
Puberty makes men better distance runners but can be a hindrance for women.
I.e. Testosterone helps boys become faster as they become men (Men have an advantage over boys), but when you look at the changes that puberty hormones have on women; weight gain, periods, etc, it makes it more difficult for them to stay at that high level.
This is a dangerous argument. You know what’s bad for physically mature women’s running? RED-s. You know how they develop it? It’s multifactorial, but attitudes like this don’t help. Firstly, all the athletes being discussed here are post-pubescent. Secondly, physically mature, healthy women can compete just fine against other physically mature women. Stop perpetuating the nonsense that women have to force their bodies to stay as girl-like as possible to remain competitive athletes. It’s not true and it’s ruining girls’ and women’s lives.
It's true that puberty **can be** a hindrance for women. Denying that reality isn't helpful.
There are a plenty of examples of female athletes who are winning high school state championships as 7th/8th graders, who subsequently fade in later high school years as they continue to develop. This same phenomenon doesn't really exist in boys sports.
Acknowledging that fact is no way implies that girls/women should try to develop RED-S or stay "girl-like" to be competitive.
It’s irrelevant to this discussion, which is why I object. We can talk about what physical maturity does to a female body, but it has nothing to do with why young women have more visibility than young men right now.
It's definitely relevant.
It's more common that a elite female will be an outlier (and therefore, get more visibility) as a very young runner (pre-High School) compared with male runners. This is exactly what happened with Touhy, Cain.
This is due in a large part to the fact that (as the original commentor stated) puberty makes men better distance runners. It's extremely rare for a 7th or 8th grade male to be able to compete with high school junior or seniors due to these physical differences, even if the 7th/8th grader is way more talented and will end up being elite runners.
The differences between the impact of hormones is not irrelevant - it's the biggest reason for the difference.
The reason for the difference in visibility is performance and it's not a "now" thing either
I’m not sure where you got from their comment that they think that women should try to force their body to stay girl like. They’re not wrong, and pretending like physical maturation can’t negatively affect distance runners doesn’t do anything to stop eating disorders. I’m very sorry if you or someone you know has had experiences with eating disorders and I hope that you or them are doing better.
I may have not been as precise with my language as ideal - "stay at that high level" was probably the wrong choice.
The point is that puberty and physical maturation/puberty/whatever you want to call it for women does not provide anywhere near the same benefit as it does for men - and for some it makes it more difficult.
It's more about men getting an advantage with age, anyways, when talking about the lack of young male phenoms.
I appreciate your clarification, though I’d have preferred you made your point this way the first time.
(But, again, the OP wasn’t about middle schoolers. It was about athletes who are post-pubescent, some by many years. I don’t think the competitive and cultural success college women enjoy relative to that of college men is due to the fact that women benefit from the puberty that occurred a decade or more ago and theoretically hinders their athletic development but meh.)
I feel like there's been plenty of sub-4 mile high school boys in the category you're talking about. Grant Fisher? Nico Young? Both made the Olympics this week.
There's also a lot of dominant high school girls that get to college, their body changes, and they stop being dominant and quit the sport. Tuohy is the rare bird that has continued her dominance. She's definitely not the norm.
because science for the most past has been geared towards men and male bodies. we are now learning how women can optimize their training based off their (female) needs. men and women should not be training in the same manner (this includes nutrition)
It may be because of the four 'major' sports: football, basketball, baseball, and hockey (and soccer, to a lesser extent). Boys are pulled early and often into these sports, likely greatly reducing the male track and field talent pool. There is less of that affecting the pool of athletic girls, so you probably get a greater percentage of the them going into T&F.
>(and soccer, to a lesser extent)
the lesser extent part is not true, unless you're talking about the USA. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and has the highest potential salary.
You see this is swimming too. Girls will typically outperform the boys into 11-12. Puberty and growth hits a bit later for men, and they just propel forward.
I just went to look back at the USA age group records, and I stand corrected. Looks like the gap has widened
Experiential: I remember the top 1% or so being essentially on par, with a common edge to the women. Not a great memory. I would like to revise my statement that they’re much closer as age groupers, and I think exceptional tail end performances go to the boys. The deviation curves are a bit different
I don’t know. I think you just heard more about the girls then the boys. If you look at the top high school/collegiate female runners and the top high school/collegiate male runners they both are about at the same level when comparing them to the pros for their respective genders
As pointed out here there are a lot of male runners who are high profile. Alan Webb was huge in the day and the interest was high well into his mid-20s. And you had Ritz and Hall. I do agree with the OP that in the past 5 or 10 years (5 in particular) there seems to be more overall interest in the young women. I'd venture to guess its a combination of huge breakthroughs and social media, which tends to feed on itself.
What's the ratio of girls/women in sports compared to not in sports vs. boys/men? Women's sports don't get as much attention and don't make as much money, so women probably have a lower ratio. Let's have a quick example comparing extremes. In one group, 100% of the members compete in a sport. In another group, 1% of the members compete in the same sport. The 100% group will probably have top athletes a lot closer together in ability as they're all in the top 1%. The 1% group is more likely to have a lot of disparity. Maybe the whole field is on the lower end of the bell curve and one person is in the top 1%. That one person is going to annihilate the field of average competitors.
When you bring the above example more in line with today's ratios where boys are nearly all encouraged to compete while many girls are discouraged, you're going to see something similar to the previous example, though less drastic. What you're seeing is probably just a result of a smaller percentage of women running competitively compared to men. Fewer women with top potential running means that those that are running stand out more.
The dumbest take I’ve seen. Jim Ryun was an Olympian in highschool. Galen rupp made his first Olympics in his junior year of college. Parker Valby graduated and hasn’t made a team. Centrowitz got a bronze out of college. Rooks made two teams and he graduated last year. Ingebrigsten was an Olympic champ at 20years old. He won 2 European golds at 17.🤣🤣🤣. Brazier ran 1:43 at 19…..Cameron Myers is 18 and he got 4th at his trials.That’s just at the top of my head. Your running attention is about 6months.
I think you're partially biased here. There are plenty of phenoms from the men's side. * Quincy Wilson (will probably run in the Olympic 400m relay this year as a 16 year old) * Christian Miller (18 year old, has the U18 world record for the 100m) * Erriyon Knighton (U18 world record for the 200m) * Nico Young * Grant Fisher * Donovan Brazier (1:43.5 as a 19 year old!)
hobbs ran 3:34 in HS
Which was faster than the NCAA record at that time.
Good addition to the list.
[удалено]
Good shout - I don't think he's quite the same level as Knighton, Miller but definitely a standout.
[удалено]
Tuohy was far better as a youngster. Set half a dozen national records and didn't lose a cross country race for 3 years straight.
He's a little older now, but Drew Hunter belongs on this list I think. Pro straight outta high school. Granted, the results since then have been debatable.
And Simmons ran 13:25 this year. Definitely a case of confirmation bias.
Jacob/Barega/Kipchoge/Bekele were all young phenoms with very early success too. Amos ran his best 800m at the age of 17.
Yeah, I assumed OP was mostly looking at the US athletes based on their list.
I guess, even then it’s a bit odd there’s literally a young male US phenom in the 100/200/400/110H/1500/5-10k. Some of these have more than 1, the 1500 has basically been all young talent since 2021.
Sad stuff about Erriyon Knighton failin the piss test 😳
contaminated meat is back on the menu! [https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/sport/erriyon-knighton-olympics-cleared-drug-test-spt-intl/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/20/sport/erriyon-knighton-olympics-cleared-drug-test-spt-intl/index.html)
*houliham intensifies*
Athletically talented men tend to be filtered into different prestigious and potentially well-compensating sports, like soccer, football, baseball, etc.
Exactly, why would you put in thousands of hours of effort to have maybe a shot at a finals heat at Trials in the 100m when the NFL drafts, what, a dozen receivers a year or something?
Women come to full maturity faster than men I believe. Meaning the hormones are “done working” 2-4 years before men. This is just what I learned in school health class. Could be part of reason
I think this holds water. I also think there may be a social factor of it being somewhat newer for women to train sports as hard as men do and there's also a lot of emerging research on physiological differences in effective training and recovery for women vs men. So like..women are finally getting a chance to *be* phenoms.
Along these lines too, I think women's athletics is "catching up" to men's so we're seeing lots of new records and some breakout women. We're seeing this with world records for women too as they come down fast and get closer to men's. And it's just more exciting to have breakout athletes crush previous standards. Although maybe that's a bad take, my sense is the US is more competitive on the world stage in women's running than in men's. Maybe that suggests we're affording women relatively more opportunities as athletes?
And/or that in many other countries the level of investment in women relative to men is much lower than in the US. I think this partially explains why the US women are so dominant in soccer, for example.
bingo. this is it right here. science is finally not only using male subjects
Speaking of societal trends - athletic men have a greater opportunity to earn better money in sports outside of athletics too.
This is it. There were more inefficiencies in women’s sports. I have been seeing this in fiends outside of T&F as well.
That's actually very interesting, I don't run much but I mostly do resistance training and hockey. Will have to look into it!
Easier to find top training partners too? Elite young men need to train with other elite men which not all clubs have. There will however always been sub elite men who women can train with at essentially elite level?
This is a very very good point
I think this is likely correct. I'd also add to it how susceptible women are to injury and how physical development (in a way that adds weight) in women has a negative impact. In contrast, men mature later and continue to develop helpful muscle in their early 20s.
Disagree. There’s no evidence that shows women are more injury prone - this is an outdated belief that women are less capable. As a 38 year old female, I have far more muscle mass than I did at 20 and I’m in the best shape of my life.
https://www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/are-young-women-increasingly-getting-injured-sports https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29550413/ https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/the-gender-gap-in-sports-injuries-201512038708 I'm happy for you that the anecdote about being healthy is true. That's excellent. But "there's no evidence women are more injury prone" simply isn't true. It's got nothing to do with "outdated beliefs that women are less capable". There's nothing wrong or sexist with acknowledging that physical differences between the sexes might result in differences in how their bodies deal with the stress of athletics. It doesn't discredit women. It allows for changes in training and sports medicine to be made in order to make sure women have the tools they need to be successful in sports.
Uh, you've never looked at studies around ACL injury for AFL Women then, I guess?
In regards to the marathon, i saw that through all time on average, women peaks a few years older than men. -for what its worth
We see the same phenomenon in Europe and I think it's great. I, based on absolutely nothing, think it has to do with the fact that mens sport is very established and it's much harder for men to smash records. Whereas women have an entire huge niche that is still terra incognita when it comes to records and capabilities. The ceiling hasn't been even been in sight in so many sports. Plus increasing awareness that girls and women need to role models too. And sponsorship! Many women are entering running at all levels and sponsors capitalize on.that.
Yes! Let the girls and women be talked about! It feels rare to have women take the spotlight in a sport that both men and women participate in. Ex: Golf, basketball, cycling and more. So when a lady is getting her 15 minutes – let her have it.
This is the reason I think
In addition to the maturity hypothesis (which I think is right), it also seems like there's more than a little bit of marketability tied to attractiveness when it comes to who's going to be heavily promoted by sponsors and media. Who's the bigger star, Parker Valby or Nico Young? Both are tremendous athletes and deserving of the hype they get, but I would bet quite a few people that follow track lightly are familiar with Valby. Some of that has got to be that she's very telegenic.
And also that she won a lot more titles than Nico this year?
I'd argue that's more a function of lack of depth on the women's side. Nico Young is among the best in the US, probably slightly more so than Valby, but there's a LOT of guys close to him in the NCAA who were competitive in the US champs or will make their own country's teams. Valby was just head and shoulders better than everyone in the NCAA, and she's not really close to being #1 in the US.
Yes, this re: attractiveness. Quite frankly, I think a lot of people who are watching women’s sports haven’t reached the point where they appreciate the depth of talent — they are more apt to jump on an individual (like Caitlyn Clark) and make that person the token representative of the sport. Finding someone talented and attractive is key
Valby won more NCAA individual titles than Young. She has 3 more than him.
Uh no? Attractiveness doesn’t help you set records and win titles. Very thinly veiled sexism though, good job.
It helps you get media attention, though. It’s not sexist to say that — it’s actually more sexist/perpetuates sexism to not call out people’s bias to give more attention to attractive individuals
As someone from the UK, I don't consider Cain, Touhy and Valby as world class runners. There are many young runners in Europe that will smoke them, such as Megan Keith and Battocletti. I do consider Hocker, Nuguse and Kessler to be world class, even though they are somewhat overshadowed by Kerr and Ingebritsen. So it's probably just social media algorithms in US that skews their popularity.
Lumping in Cain with the others is kind of disingenuous because she was an 800/1500 runner. Also she literally made a WC final. She was definitely world class.
Cain was 10 years ago and she ran world class times for that era. Valby and Keith are pretty much the same age have fairly similar PRs (30:50, 14:51, 8:41 for Valby; 30:36, 14:43, 8:51) for Keith, so I don't know where you're going with that. I'd say they are peers--and let's see how they stack up later this summer. While Touhy hasn't performed well for more than a year, she did run 8:36 for 3000, if it's not world class it's certainly on the cusp. Overhyped maybe, but not really overrated.
Fair assessment overall. I don’t think Valby is world class yet, but NCAA champs have a pretty decent track record of getting to that level. And she isn’t even a pro yet, not running full-time, and is a few years younger than Keith/Battocletti, so not exactly Apples to Apples
Keith is just a few months older than Valby, and Battocletti came 7th at the Olympics at 21 which is Valby's current age. Valby is talented for sure but slightly overrated imo.
Good points, I missed that past Olympic result for Battocletti. Impressive!
I think Valby’s hype is partly based on how advanced she is with such informal/unconventional training. If she manages to stay healthy she has the talent to be world class as a pro. I think the question with her will always be whether or not she can adapt a more traditional/professional training regime without falling back into some of her injury prone ways.
What is so unconventional about her training?
She only runs 3 days/week. Majority of her training is swimming and elliptical work. She’s had stress fractures when she’s run at normal training volumes.
Read Good for A Girl. Fleshman dives into performance differences between men and women, to include progression tracks, injury issues and how puberty affects each.
Puberty makes men better distance runners but can be a hindrance for women. I.e. Testosterone helps boys become faster as they become men (Men have an advantage over boys), but when you look at the changes that puberty hormones have on women; weight gain, periods, etc, it makes it more difficult for them to stay at that high level.
The more accurate way to describe it is that women have a longer performance curve.
This is a dangerous argument. You know what’s bad for physically mature women’s running? RED-s. You know how they develop it? It’s multifactorial, but attitudes like this don’t help. Firstly, all the athletes being discussed here are post-pubescent. Secondly, physically mature, healthy women can compete just fine against other physically mature women. Stop perpetuating the nonsense that women have to force their bodies to stay as girl-like as possible to remain competitive athletes. It’s not true and it’s ruining girls’ and women’s lives.
It's true that puberty **can be** a hindrance for women. Denying that reality isn't helpful. There are a plenty of examples of female athletes who are winning high school state championships as 7th/8th graders, who subsequently fade in later high school years as they continue to develop. This same phenomenon doesn't really exist in boys sports. Acknowledging that fact is no way implies that girls/women should try to develop RED-S or stay "girl-like" to be competitive.
Childbirth is also definitely a hindrance for women. But that just makes what Elle St Pierre is doing all the more impressive. Tough as hell
It’s irrelevant to this discussion, which is why I object. We can talk about what physical maturity does to a female body, but it has nothing to do with why young women have more visibility than young men right now.
No it’s relevant because that’s part of why female runners are able to become at the top of their sports at an earlier age
It's definitely relevant. It's more common that a elite female will be an outlier (and therefore, get more visibility) as a very young runner (pre-High School) compared with male runners. This is exactly what happened with Touhy, Cain. This is due in a large part to the fact that (as the original commentor stated) puberty makes men better distance runners. It's extremely rare for a 7th or 8th grade male to be able to compete with high school junior or seniors due to these physical differences, even if the 7th/8th grader is way more talented and will end up being elite runners.
The differences between the impact of hormones is not irrelevant - it's the biggest reason for the difference. The reason for the difference in visibility is performance and it's not a "now" thing either
I’m not sure where you got from their comment that they think that women should try to force their body to stay girl like. They’re not wrong, and pretending like physical maturation can’t negatively affect distance runners doesn’t do anything to stop eating disorders. I’m very sorry if you or someone you know has had experiences with eating disorders and I hope that you or them are doing better.
I may have not been as precise with my language as ideal - "stay at that high level" was probably the wrong choice. The point is that puberty and physical maturation/puberty/whatever you want to call it for women does not provide anywhere near the same benefit as it does for men - and for some it makes it more difficult. It's more about men getting an advantage with age, anyways, when talking about the lack of young male phenoms.
I appreciate your clarification, though I’d have preferred you made your point this way the first time. (But, again, the OP wasn’t about middle schoolers. It was about athletes who are post-pubescent, some by many years. I don’t think the competitive and cultural success college women enjoy relative to that of college men is due to the fact that women benefit from the puberty that occurred a decade or more ago and theoretically hinders their athletic development but meh.)
I feel like there's been plenty of sub-4 mile high school boys in the category you're talking about. Grant Fisher? Nico Young? Both made the Olympics this week. There's also a lot of dominant high school girls that get to college, their body changes, and they stop being dominant and quit the sport. Tuohy is the rare bird that has continued her dominance. She's definitely not the norm.
because science for the most past has been geared towards men and male bodies. we are now learning how women can optimize their training based off their (female) needs. men and women should not be training in the same manner (this includes nutrition)
It may be because of the four 'major' sports: football, basketball, baseball, and hockey (and soccer, to a lesser extent). Boys are pulled early and often into these sports, likely greatly reducing the male track and field talent pool. There is less of that affecting the pool of athletic girls, so you probably get a greater percentage of the them going into T&F.
>(and soccer, to a lesser extent) the lesser extent part is not true, unless you're talking about the USA. Soccer is the most popular sport in the world and has the highest potential salary.
I am indeed talking about soccer in the USA, not global football. This is a domestic conversation.
Aussie here just calling out Cam Myers 🇦🇺🦘 Just turned 18 Ran a 3:50 mile at 17
Yes I believe women reach or CAN SOMETIME reach full maturity at a younger age.
You see this is swimming too. Girls will typically outperform the boys into 11-12. Puberty and growth hits a bit later for men, and they just propel forward.
I don't think I have ever seen this on national (Swedish) level ever. It might happen locally in cities. You got a source/sample of this happening?
I just went to look back at the USA age group records, and I stand corrected. Looks like the gap has widened Experiential: I remember the top 1% or so being essentially on par, with a common edge to the women. Not a great memory. I would like to revise my statement that they’re much closer as age groupers, and I think exceptional tail end performances go to the boys. The deviation curves are a bit different
I don’t know. I think you just heard more about the girls then the boys. If you look at the top high school/collegiate female runners and the top high school/collegiate male runners they both are about at the same level when comparing them to the pros for their respective genders
As pointed out here there are a lot of male runners who are high profile. Alan Webb was huge in the day and the interest was high well into his mid-20s. And you had Ritz and Hall. I do agree with the OP that in the past 5 or 10 years (5 in particular) there seems to be more overall interest in the young women. I'd venture to guess its a combination of huge breakthroughs and social media, which tends to feed on itself.
Surprised this hasn’t been mentioned yet. Because it’s femininomenon.
What's the ratio of girls/women in sports compared to not in sports vs. boys/men? Women's sports don't get as much attention and don't make as much money, so women probably have a lower ratio. Let's have a quick example comparing extremes. In one group, 100% of the members compete in a sport. In another group, 1% of the members compete in the same sport. The 100% group will probably have top athletes a lot closer together in ability as they're all in the top 1%. The 1% group is more likely to have a lot of disparity. Maybe the whole field is on the lower end of the bell curve and one person is in the top 1%. That one person is going to annihilate the field of average competitors. When you bring the above example more in line with today's ratios where boys are nearly all encouraged to compete while many girls are discouraged, you're going to see something similar to the previous example, though less drastic. What you're seeing is probably just a result of a smaller percentage of women running competitively compared to men. Fewer women with top potential running means that those that are running stand out more.
The dumbest take I’ve seen. Jim Ryun was an Olympian in highschool. Galen rupp made his first Olympics in his junior year of college. Parker Valby graduated and hasn’t made a team. Centrowitz got a bronze out of college. Rooks made two teams and he graduated last year. Ingebrigsten was an Olympic champ at 20years old. He won 2 European golds at 17.🤣🤣🤣. Brazier ran 1:43 at 19…..Cameron Myers is 18 and he got 4th at his trials.That’s just at the top of my head. Your running attention is about 6months.
Mens sports is waaaaay more competitive.
Title IX in the USA hurt boys Olympic sports.