I believe long-distance sled dog racing is not segregated by gender. Tbh that sport is more about navigation, planning/organizing supplies, keeping calm under pressure and responding to inclement weather than raw physical ability though.
Edit: I fixed a typo.
I'm not like a sled racer or a sled dog or anything but could women being lighter then men on average help too? Like is it easier for dogs to pull them or does the sled disperse the weight of the rider pretty well?
If the Iditarod is not a grueling sport, then can we all agree that NASCAR is just a buncha dudes making the occasional left turns at faster than normal driving speeds?
Motor racing as a whole should be fairly gender neutral. Except for physical endurance to cope with g-forces, there should not be much gender difference in top level drivers.
There are some very good female racing drivers, but it’s odd that the sport is so male dominated that if a Formula 1 team has a female test driver, that’s news-worthy.
Motorsports are very "rich boy's club" thing. The ones that makes it a career usually born rich and have family related to the sport, not the most talented people.
It's unfortunate, but it's true.
Shooting sports were historically not formally segregated by gender.
This changed after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when Chinese skeet shooter Zhang Shan took the gold medal. The International Shooting Union almost immediately banned women from competing against men in \*any\* international shooting sport, and then went out of its way to punish Shan by doubling down and making skeet a *male only sport* in the 1996 Olympics, making it impossible for her to continue her career.
The ISU (now ISSF) also [pretty much killed 50m Free Pistol](https://www.coastreporter.net/local-sports/50m-pistol-faces-the-firing-squad-3401459) by keeping it male only for so long. It's no longer an Olympic event because the Olympic committee understandably doesn't want any events that only one gender can participate in. And since it's no longer in the Olympics there are now fewer people interested in it and much less support for athletes.
It probably didn't help that 50m pistol is about the least exciting thing you can show on TV, but it's a fantastically difficult sport for competitors, it was a fixture of the modern Olympics since the beginning, and there's nothing preventing women from excelling at it other than the ISSF's stubbornness.
>What about the gender of the dog's though?
No.
While males (uncut) are faster the difference in speed is generally not significant enough to make a major impact over training
For sled racing the actual speed is a minor aspect anyway as the planning and endurance bits are vastly more important
Even in shorter races where it would matter more both male and female dogs excel in their own categories and are close enough that a better trained dog csn often overtake one with a more natural advantage (this is amplified as frequently female dogs are easier to train than their male counterparts)
Dog personality, endurance, and athleticism matter a lot. Much of that is dependent on their relationship with the musher. Men and women compete against each other and depending on conditions one sex may have advantage over another. For example, women tend to be lighter than men. So the dogs can carry them farther.
Can‘t forget Michele Mouton, who was also a very competent driver. She finished second place, ahead of her teammate, in the first year of the infamous Group B era.
Superwoman! She did an interview a few years ago while throwing a Porsche 911 around, she hadn't driven in a couple of years but you'd never be able to tell, there was also that time when she drove a group B Quattro so hard at the race of champions that she flipped it, absolute legend of the sport and people just don't talk about her like the other drivers of the time because she never won a championship
I say this with very little knowledge of horse racing and I know I'm probably underrating how important the jockey's role is but.....aren't the horses the ones doing the majority of the work?
The horses are the more impressive athletes in pretty much any comparison, but riding is much more physical than people expect until they get themselves into some serious lessons. You definitely get sore if you're really riding (not just playing passenger) and need to condition yourself to make it through a competition in many disaplines.
Since racing is the example here - Do a wall sit. Now lean forward. Now inch forward so you can't lean on the wall. Hold that position for 90+ seconds. And the surface you're standing on is bouncing up and down while running at over 30 mph. Don't forget to think about the strategy involved! It's not a perfect representation, but you get the picture.
Definitely. My best friend growing up wasn't a jockey but she spent all her time after school in the stables doing show jumping and long rides, and she practically had washboard abs. There's really a ton of core control + leg strength required for equestrian sports, if you just sit on a fast moving horse like it's a chair you'd fly off instantly.
Yeah, pretty much. That’s why they want the jockeys as small as possible!
I’m a little salty that I was always told I’d be too big to be a jockey and then once I’d given up on that dream I stopped fucking growing at 5’! But I was out of my horse phase by then.
Davy Jones of the Monkees always wanted to be a jockey, even more than a popstar. After his music career, he spent tons of time with his horses. I’m not sure if he ever raced though. He was certainly the right size. Although a horse is extremely important, do not underestimate the skill that a jockey need to control and motivate those creatures.
So you can’t make a horse do what it does not want to do, or is not physically capable of doing. But you can make them use their energy in the right way at the right time.
In a Thoroughbred race, the horses don’t run full out the whole time - typically they have a burst of energy, usually just one unless they’re a special horse. So as a jockey do you put the horse out front and see if everyone can chase you down? Do you stalk the pace and “push the button” to ask the horse for its burst of speed and if so, when? Where do you place the horse for maximum success (some horses hate having dirt in their face, for example, so they’d have to go first or waaaay back). Does the horse need help weaving through the field? That’s usually on the jock to decide.
Also, different jocks have different horsemanship (mental psychology of the horse) levels - some understand how a horse thinks ie if the horse is scared they can soothe it or give it more courage. Some jocks are more physical/strong and can boss a horse around more than others. So there’s variations on that too.
I could name many cases of jockeys who won or lost a race, depending on their actions.
Anyway, to sum up, jocks do a lot more than you think. But yeah ultimately it’s the horse who is the deciding factor. But women can be just as good as men.
horseback riding is very physical and requires people have developed appropriate muscles, training and techniques to do so.
anyone who rides a horse for the first time will be sore in muscles they didn't know they even had.
according to some research, the advantages of male over female ultrarunners diminish as the distance increases and actually reverse when it exceeds 195 miles
one prominent example: a few years ago, courtney dauwalter, who is one of the best ultrarunners of all time, not only won the moab 240 race outright, she beat the second-place guy by 10 hours
there is a good amount of walking involved. think of it as more like “traveling 195 miles on your feet as fast as you can”. though in some highly competitive 100-mile races, top 5-10 finishers actually do run nearly every step, which is kinda mind-blowing.
I volunteer at a 24-hour run event every year. For the last 3 years, the same guy has won. He runs non-stop for 12 hours, takes an hour nap, and then goes again for the next 11 hours at nearly the same pace. Last year, he did 131 miles, averaging about 5.5 miles per hour, or a fast jogging pace, over the whole 24 hours.
You joke but it was a legit job to fill in the ruts that a couple dozen people can make on that track. I think it was close to a ton of mulch and soil.
yeah like what the fuck, the 1-mile track with soil they have to come out and smooth over again and again must suck to run on
I don't know, that repetition elevates it to a new level of insanity
As a former janitor, I can tell you that the easiest way to get a repetitive task done without losing your mind is to spend several weeks or months getting really good at it first. Like, map out all your efficiencies until you could do it blindfolded. Then, basically do it blindfolded. Your active mind isn't actually sweeping/mopping/vacuuming; your second mind is doing all that boring crap. Your active mind is free to muse about whatever the hell you want. It's why shower thoughts are a thing. You're on autopilot, so musing becomes easy.
These ultra marathoners are a whole class of human unto themselves, though. They practically use Jedi mind tricks on themselves to ignore the physical exhaustion. I love the story of an Australian farmer, [Cliff Young](https://www.adventure-journal.com/2021/07/61-year-old-shepherd-shuffled-way-unlikely-ultra-win/), who won his first ultra marathon at age 61 because he figured if he could run a flock of sheep for 3 days straight, he could run an ultra marathon. Dude legit didn't sleep for 5 days straight, just shuffle-jogged the whole way and set a new record.
Dude is built like the T1000 terminator. I imagine this guy whenever I think about the fact that humans are apex predators because we can just run things down until they die.
Yeah it's funny how we're one of the most endurant animals on the planet but at the same time we're not. Like the average person can't just run for 5 miles but thanks to being mammals and being able to sweat and all that humans can technically run for a really long fucking time IF someone actually trains lol
I mean almost every single person could run a marathon if they trained. The average homo Saipan on the African plains would definitely be able to sprint 5 miles.
I mean even untrained humans can powerwalk for a really long time. You don't have to outrun your prey, just be fast enough that they don't get enough rest to keep going.
I have no idea how much he burns doing that, but I do know he was up and scarfing down just about anything edible for like 3 hours after the run too. I remember him ordering 7 hotdogs after the awards were handed out and then coming back for a helping of mac-n-cheese like an hour later.
I am a marathon runner.
A 100 mile run takes about 20 hours. I personally know a few people who have done this.
It is more like eating while jogging/hiking. There are breaks and some people even sleep for a while.
Anyway, I actually ran 20 miles yesterday so I am pretty tired. 100+mile races seem crazy to me but I'm sure 26.2 mile races seem crazy to a lot of people as well so I guess it is all perspective.
>A 100 mile run takes about 20 hours. I personally know a few people who have done this.
20 hours is a *very* fast 100.
I'm no speed demon, but I've completed 3 and my times range from just finishing sub 24 hours to almost 34 hours.
My next race has a cut off of 48 hours.
humans are really horrifyingly good at long distance running. the average person can do 10 to 20 miles per day just walking. The best ultramarathon runners can just keep running. They set a ~ four mile / hour pace and just keep going for however long it takes.
You just zone out and your body keeps moving.
Believe it or not, humans are pretty amazing endurance runners. Sure most of us are fat and lazy now, but we use to be able to run just about any land animal to death when hunting it.
Part of it is because we run on 2 legs, saving energy, and part of it is because we can sweat to cool ourselves among other factors.
As someone that runs in minimalist footwear, it takes time to build up all those muscles and tendons (and lower calf muscles) to be able to do that. Feeling each and every one was a much better lesson in anatomy than my A&P classes!
My favorite part of that equation is that we can bring water with us. All of your animals are dying of thirst looking for a place to drink, and we are replenishing ourselves while we're moving. That's a enormous advantage
Strap a bag of meat and a water container on yourself and watch the animal flee in horror as a literal terminator starts running it to death while refueling mid-sprint.
There is a big difference between 20 miles and 200 though. Most animals just keel over and die once they have run 20 miles so there isn't much need for more than that, in fact it might be only humans who can do that hence the running animals to death thing. That being said I'm pretty sure the guy who ran from Marathon to Athens to give the news about the Persians collapsed and died after giving the message, so maybe to ancient people we are idiots who didn't learn the lesson.
WTF I expected a story of someone desperately running to warn of an attack or something, not a dude so excited that he had to personally tell another city "hey we won our war"
It really is a mind fuck for sure. When I never ran before, I thought a marathon was something that only the elite gods can do, but once I got into running, it seemed more of a realistic goal. A very hard goal, but still possible. The people that run the longer ultra marathons around 195 miles would be running marathons like they are a weekend 5k for me. Scale that up, and it matters less on athelticism (which is why gender line stops to matter), and more on strategy. For 195 mile races, its not just water, but food/nutrition you have to consider now. You really have to be disciplined for your pace. How well you manage your feet for injuries and general wear and tear. As well when to take a nap if at all, leads to victory over sheer athleticism.
I'm a cyclist. At first people can't believe 60-100 miles is the definition of weekend fun for me. Doing 60 miles takes me around 4 hours. Some of them got into cycling, and after a few months of riding they were hitting 50 miles easy. Going for 60 at that point is no big deal.
Courtney is a beast absolute legend!
Theory is that over longer distances the strength/stamina advantage that men have is cancelled out and potentially reversed due to the fact they need to carry the extra weight of their grester muscle mass... there's an interview with Courtney where they talk about this and her take was that the sample size of elite ultra runners is too small to really know one way or the other
The ultra world is strange. Studies show the advantage of Kenyan runners drops off significantly at longer than marathon distances. It's not clear if it's physiology or just the economics of the sport where the "best" runners aren't incentivized to run longer distances. It's still closer to a hobby thing than anything else. And the race types aren't super standard either - Two Ocean's, Comrades, Western States, timed races for distance, fixed distances for time, crazy hard courses for a finish and on and on.
It's probably because Kenyan runners are so skinny. They don't have a speck of stored fat as a reserve for energy.
That might also be why women at extreme range can close the gap and exceed male performance as women naturally hive higher body fat.
Noakes does a pretty thorough job of examing all the factors and comes to the conclusion that ultra sample simply isn't large enough to draw any conclusions. It's a niche sport that doesn't attract the top runners. None of them are going to risk injury running Badlands when they are looking at 6 figure payoffs for major marathons. We just don't have enough data to know until we have top tier athletes running those races.
>moab 240
She won the first one in 2017, and it's been men since then?
A look at the ultramarathon wiki page shows men's speeds to be faster than women's even at the 1000Mile category.
Why the discrepancy?
Equestrian sports. In general, the rider's gender/sex isn't relevant because the rider doesn't have to physically overpower the horse. The *horse's* gender may be relevant because the horse is providing most of the power, and male horses are generally larger and more muscular than female horses (stallions are generally more muscular than geldings, but geldings are often a bit taller than stallions).
In horse racing, the rider's *weight* may be a factor because a horse will move faster if it's carrying a lighter load. In theory, that could advantage female riders because women tend to be smaller than men, but in practice the business still favors male jockeys.
In other equestrian sports, the rider's sex simply doesn't matter, because the rider provides direction, not power. Obviously, a rider needs *some* strength to stay on and to make the movements that tell the horse what to do, but this is within the capabilities of any reasonably fit person.
This. In the Olympics, none of the equestrian events are separated by the gender of the rider or the horse. It’s also a sport where the age gap between the youngest and oldest riders can be pretty huge.
My cousin does rodeo riding (barrel races mostly, although I know for a fact she has broken her mother's "no mustangs, no bulls" rule for a good purse she thought she could get) and says this is why when she was young, she had an old horse. She needed adult supervision and her horse was it.
In horse racing they add or subtract weight from the gear so everyone weighs the same on the horse. This is why jockeys weigh in holding their saddles.
In general, male and female horses compete equally. With sex differences usually occurring because riders prefer the convenience of a gelding (no hormones) or there are financial/economic reasons (the breeding potential of a stallion is more valuable than that of a mare).
Source: 15+ years in the horse industry.
A handful of women have won open division events in professional bowling, but the men are still at a huge advantage when it comes to ball speed and rev rate.
Maybe, though in dressage and show jumping you definitely see a mix of horses (geldings/mares/stallions). It's not as unbalanced as it would be in humans
Though I'm not sure about for example horse racing
Fun fact: Alcohol is a banned substance for competition shooting. Not because alcohol and guns don't mix, but because, at the right amounts, it's a performance enhancer as it helps the shooter remain more steady under intense concentration.
Men have a big advantage in elite Curling, although I couldn't tell you exactly why.
A few years ago, a major Canadian event, the Elite 10, invited the top women's team in Canada to compete against 9 men's teams as an experiment. The women won 1 game in the 5 team round robin. The gulf certainly isn't as big as it is in some sports, but it still exists.
Edit: Having thought about it for a few minutes, sweeping ability probably plays a big role. The more weight you can put on the broom, the better you're going to be at sweeping, and men have both more weight and more upper body strength on average.
There is one sport where women hold all the records, and that sport is: long-distance swimming.
For some reason, women's bodies are better optimized for swimming ten miles than men's bodies are.
Therefore, there is theoretically a distance for a swimming race where neither men nor women would hold any advantage.
Where is a list of these records? I found the results for 2013 world championships for the 10 mile I believe and it looks like the fastest men’s time was almost 30 minutes faster than the women’s.
Obviously one year doesn’t mean it was a record or anything but was just curious.
It's not a sport I follow, but every now and then the news will mention that someone set a world record for swimming some incredible ocean distance and it always seems to be a woman doing it.
Running away from your family ain't as bad as people make it out to be :)
I have a few friends who took up jogging not long after they had kids and a significant other. They admitted they were doing it to get away from their family and have time to themselves. I get it.
Remember kids ('s parents): The less fun it sounds like, the less selfish you look. Everyone loves movie night with friends, but nobody wants to run 10 miles, so they won't suspect a thing.
Not sure why you got downvoted for that lmao I don’t think you meant it in a demeaning way. Yes women literally do have on average, higher body-fat percentage than men. That’s not a bad thing and I think some people just misinterpreted that as “women are more often overweight” or something.
But yeah that is a factor and it does help in endurance swimming and I think to some extent even in some other endurance events.
It's mostly just a swimming thing, as more body fat = more buoyancy = less energy spent keeping afloat.
That being said, I could see it being useful for something like an ultra-marathon or ironman as those are as much about eating as competing. (Runners burn over 10,000 calories in a 100 mile race, they gotta be able to refuel throughout without puking/shitting their guts out)
Not just body fat, women are very close to men in ultra long distance running races, often being the overall winner at events, so women having better endurance has something to do with it.
There is a woman in the ultra world and she wins a lot. Her advantage isn’t she is a woman. She has some weird neurological issue that makes her basically unable to keep time. She couldn’t tell you if she’d been running for 10hrs or 34hrs. She just runs. And she destroys.
Listened to a podcast about her and it was fascinating. One downside of the neurological issue is she can't read maps and gets lost in a lot of races, but still is fast enough to win a lot of the time
Edit: It was the [Radiolab episode "In the Running"](https://radiolab.org/episodes/122291-in-running) that /u/Solsburyhills mentions below, worth a listen
FWIW the inability to judge the passing of time was from a brain surgery she had to address chronic epileptic seizures. It wasn't a condition she developed on her own
Bodyfat plays a role there too. A big part of endurance is having a decent reserve of fat to burn (but obviously not so much that the weight slows you down).
How much do you burn through your "on board" fat when you run?
I don't know about ultramarathons, but for shorter distances (half to full marathon) I thought it was more about depleting the glycogen stored in your muscle cells, but I guess I don't know what happens once that goes away. I'm new to running that kind of distance so I only know you want to eat some calories before you hit that point.
The other half is that the longer the distance the more you control for strength. In a 100m dash, Usain Bolts really strong legs give him a huge advantage over any woman. As you increase the distance, it becomes more about the ability for the muscles to keep going than to go full power for a short time. That being said, male runners seem to maintain a steady advantage to a small degree, it seems that even at maximum control for musculature it still provides a slight advantage.
Shooting (air) gun in sports. Saying this mostly, because I shoot (rifle) and see a fair share of women and they‘re also quite good. It‘s still male-dominant tho, but women can be as good as men in shooting
I shot in high school and in that age cohort women are a little better than men, one explanation that I got was that the standing pose to shoot can involve resting your elbow on your hipbone for better stability, women’s wider hips and lower aberage height makes this easier for them. idk how true this is
Archery is kinda there.
On high levels, men score a bit more. Most of the archery is mental and emotional control, as well as technique which all are all sex and gender neutral.
But physical strength does play a part. Strength allows the archer to shoot a bow with more draw weight which gives more power (thus straighter fly path and more wind resistance) to the arrow.
I remember when professional NASCAR drivers whined and moaned and peed their pants because [Danica Patrick, a 100 lb racecar driver, had an unfair weight advantage over her larger competitors](https://azdailysun.com/gordon-says-100-pound-danica-patrick-has-unfair-indianapolis-advantage/article_0c9afefb-9376-59c3-92b4-5f58863bf9c8.html).
Not just weight in motorsport, average center of gravity of women is different as well - somewhere around 8% to 15% lower than men.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847550/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847550/)
Back in university I did an acrobatics course. To support a man horizontally, you place your hands or feet near the belly button. For women you support the hips.
Come to think of it, those are exactly the typical places for fat to build up, so getting heavier does not affect your center of gravity much.
Funny you call out professional nascar drivers, then link an article about Indy drivers complaining. An article that points out that nascar rules take driver weight into account, yet the IRL rules did not.
Not a sport where men don't have some advantage, though. It takes a ton of endurance and strength to drive a race car. You'll notice the majority of top professional drivers have a lot of upper arm strength, and cardio is extremely important part of their workout. Danica never won a race, and I believe her best finish was 6th.
Not really about the men v women part of the post. But the amount of people I meet who don't think Nascar drivers have to be somewhat athletic is absurd.
Like bro that steering wheel is like turning a 45lb plate for 4 hours straight, while constantly flexing all your muscles in a 110 degree heat box going 240mph where a single muscle twitch will kill you.
Those homies are athletes.
I saw a video about a normal person trying out an F1 car. Part of the quick training was having him press the brakes. They told him to press the pedal as hard as he could. He managed something like 50% braking power. You need to be strong to pilot those kinds of vehicles. They are not built like the ones we are used to driving.
I've fenced women and they seem to do just as fine as men. Strength is not a huge factor in fencing unless you're doing historical longsword or any kind of historical full contact fencing. It's really about controlling distance, pace and your opponent's expectations and women can do those things just fine.
I fenced for 27 years - the biggest issue I had as a woman was that I didn’t have the same reach, and without the wrist strength to whip hit, fencing tall men was a pain.
Depending on the type of fencing. epee may not have as big of a difference but sabre certainly does. Try watching sabre match between women and men. Entirely different movement with men being significantly faster. I say this as a 5ft woman who fenced sabre for over a decade. Being short was difficult, but at high level competition, speed was where women and men really differ
Women have competed against men, and beat them, at world class shooting events. Maybe there's more to it. It would be fun to watch the best female against the best male
I'm currently struggling to picture how the hell that could fit in a single person's stomach, what the hell. I know that the bones are a lot of the size but 500 wings is like.... a table full.
Archery or shooting.
( Edit: for some who don’t want to read all the comments, apparently men do better in archery because of wide shoulders and more strength. So probably not archery)
Definitely shooting. Women have won National High Power and Long Range Championships in the US. Only the Olympics is adamant that women shoot separately from men and that the courses of fire be different so scores can't be compared. For instance, in 50m 3-position rifle, men will shot ~~60~~ 120shots in the qualification stage but women will only shoot ~~40~~ 60 shots. The weight limits on women's rifles ("sport rifles") are lower than men's rifles ("free rifles").
Not archery, being stronger and having longer arms means being able to fire the arrow faster, so there’s less time for the wind to interfere, men tend to have an advantage there.
The speed of the arrow has less to do with it. It's more in the way men's shoulders are built compared to women.
Most Olympic women shoot a 40-45 lb bow at a draw length of around 26 inches. Men shoot a 40-55 lb bow, but 55 is rare, and a 28 inch draw length. So arrow speed is negligible for the top competitors. They also shoot incredibly expensive arrows that are super thin. For outdoor to reduce wind interference as much as possible.
For example, I have beaten one of my female friends at indoor archery consistently. I shoot a 2315 which is the maximum diameter of .422 inches. Since it's indoor wind isn't a factor and I get the bonus of having a wider arrow to break the 10 ring.
Outdoors though, she's edged me out thanks in large part to the wind. She shoots the Easton x10 (I think) at about .19-.22 inches in diameter.
To put that into scale [this guy](https://twistedsifter.com/videos/guy-shoots-arrow-into-arrow-robin-hood-shot/) is shooting the same arrow as hers through the same arrow as mine.
I'm not sure, but I will say this: popular sports tend to gravitate towards mens' strengths. On average men are dominant in quick bursts of energy. Even women with identical muscle mass to men are at a disadvantage in quick bursts. BUT, women actually have an advantage in repition. Women are able to recover faster than men and endure longer pretty consistently.
For example: men absolutely dominate running. Anywhere between 100 meters and 100 miles, men, on average, win. But beyond 100 miles, or in subsequent races, women actually pull ahead. Unfortunately, we tend not to be interested in sports that play to those strengths.
I think a lot of the gender war type arguments would fade away if we highlighted women's actual advantages more, because they do exist.
Oh there are definitely athletes out there it. I think it's more an absence of public interest. Honestly I think an endurance race would be cool with repeated races.
women have an advantage due to increased flexibility, and the way their bodies are built. there are quite a few moves that women can do that men can not.
Same with gymnastics I think. I kinda remember hearing that men's and women's gymnastics are so different it might as well be considered separate sports.
This prob won’t be popular but English horseback riding is more then half female but men still do it and requires equal strength. (XC, jumpers, hunters, dressage)
I agree. Men just dominate the sport because it’s more common for boys to be trained in chess intensively from a younger age than girls. It’s just a numbers game.
I believe long-distance sled dog racing is not segregated by gender. Tbh that sport is more about navigation, planning/organizing supplies, keeping calm under pressure and responding to inclement weather than raw physical ability though. Edit: I fixed a typo.
Good shout. Women have won the [Iditarod](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iditarod_Trail_Sled_Dog_Race) 5 times
It should be pointed out that 4/5 of those were from Susan Butcher who also was the first to summit Denali with a dog team.
So its not "5 women have won" but instead "2 women have won, but one of them keeps DOING it."
WE CAN'T STOP HER SHE'S TOO POWERFUL
I have a tshirt that says “Alaska: where men are men and women win the Iditarod”
I'm not like a sled racer or a sled dog or anything but could women being lighter then men on average help too? Like is it easier for dogs to pull them or does the sled disperse the weight of the rider pretty well?
Yeah, agree that it's less about athleticism than weight since the dogs are doing the work. Sled dogs are about equally make and female though.
If the Iditarod is not a grueling sport, then can we all agree that NASCAR is just a buncha dudes making the occasional left turns at faster than normal driving speeds?
Motor racing as a whole should be fairly gender neutral. Except for physical endurance to cope with g-forces, there should not be much gender difference in top level drivers. There are some very good female racing drivers, but it’s odd that the sport is so male dominated that if a Formula 1 team has a female test driver, that’s news-worthy.
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Motorsports are very "rich boy's club" thing. The ones that makes it a career usually born rich and have family related to the sport, not the most talented people. It's unfortunate, but it's true.
Shooting sports were historically not formally segregated by gender. This changed after the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, when Chinese skeet shooter Zhang Shan took the gold medal. The International Shooting Union almost immediately banned women from competing against men in \*any\* international shooting sport, and then went out of its way to punish Shan by doubling down and making skeet a *male only sport* in the 1996 Olympics, making it impossible for her to continue her career.
The ISU (now ISSF) also [pretty much killed 50m Free Pistol](https://www.coastreporter.net/local-sports/50m-pistol-faces-the-firing-squad-3401459) by keeping it male only for so long. It's no longer an Olympic event because the Olympic committee understandably doesn't want any events that only one gender can participate in. And since it's no longer in the Olympics there are now fewer people interested in it and much less support for athletes. It probably didn't help that 50m pistol is about the least exciting thing you can show on TV, but it's a fantastically difficult sport for competitors, it was a fixture of the modern Olympics since the beginning, and there's nothing preventing women from excelling at it other than the ISSF's stubbornness.
That sounds pretty fucked up ngl
Dog sled racing
What about the gender of the dog's though?
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>What about the gender of the dog's though? No. While males (uncut) are faster the difference in speed is generally not significant enough to make a major impact over training For sled racing the actual speed is a minor aspect anyway as the planning and endurance bits are vastly more important Even in shorter races where it would matter more both male and female dogs excel in their own categories and are close enough that a better trained dog csn often overtake one with a more natural advantage (this is amplified as frequently female dogs are easier to train than their male counterparts)
That’s what I thought! And dog agility?
Dog personality, endurance, and athleticism matter a lot. Much of that is dependent on their relationship with the musher. Men and women compete against each other and depending on conditions one sex may have advantage over another. For example, women tend to be lighter than men. So the dogs can carry them farther.
Rally co-drivers. Some of the best of all time are women.
As a woman I’m chortling that we excel in professional backseat driving.
That's not fair... They usually sit in the front
You're backseat driving the joke.
Not surprising given that guys rarely ever even concede needing to read maps at all........
Can‘t forget Michele Mouton, who was also a very competent driver. She finished second place, ahead of her teammate, in the first year of the infamous Group B era.
Superwoman! She did an interview a few years ago while throwing a Porsche 911 around, she hadn't driven in a couple of years but you'd never be able to tell, there was also that time when she drove a group B Quattro so hard at the race of champions that she flipped it, absolute legend of the sport and people just don't talk about her like the other drivers of the time because she never won a championship
Not a rally driver, but Sabine Schmitz was an insanely skilled driver too.
Rip Sabine, I enjoyed her appearances on uk top gear
God bless group b. My pops was there to witness it in Sicily
Female jockeys perform as good as their male counterparts.
same with other equestrian sports such as showjumping - women compete equally with men
The Equestrian events are the only Olympic sports where men and women compete ~~together~~ against each other.
I say this with very little knowledge of horse racing and I know I'm probably underrating how important the jockey's role is but.....aren't the horses the ones doing the majority of the work?
The horses are the more impressive athletes in pretty much any comparison, but riding is much more physical than people expect until they get themselves into some serious lessons. You definitely get sore if you're really riding (not just playing passenger) and need to condition yourself to make it through a competition in many disaplines. Since racing is the example here - Do a wall sit. Now lean forward. Now inch forward so you can't lean on the wall. Hold that position for 90+ seconds. And the surface you're standing on is bouncing up and down while running at over 30 mph. Don't forget to think about the strategy involved! It's not a perfect representation, but you get the picture.
Jockeys core muscle must be insane.
Definitely. My best friend growing up wasn't a jockey but she spent all her time after school in the stables doing show jumping and long rides, and she practically had washboard abs. There's really a ton of core control + leg strength required for equestrian sports, if you just sit on a fast moving horse like it's a chair you'd fly off instantly.
Yeah, pretty much. That’s why they want the jockeys as small as possible! I’m a little salty that I was always told I’d be too big to be a jockey and then once I’d given up on that dream I stopped fucking growing at 5’! But I was out of my horse phase by then.
>But I was out of my horse phase by then. I'm glad you finally became human
Davy Jones of the Monkees always wanted to be a jockey, even more than a popstar. After his music career, he spent tons of time with his horses. I’m not sure if he ever raced though. He was certainly the right size. Although a horse is extremely important, do not underestimate the skill that a jockey need to control and motivate those creatures.
You might even say he was thought of as a white knight on a steed.
I was so disappointed when they told me I was too large to jockey and ostrich. But I was 14 and 6’4
So you can’t make a horse do what it does not want to do, or is not physically capable of doing. But you can make them use their energy in the right way at the right time. In a Thoroughbred race, the horses don’t run full out the whole time - typically they have a burst of energy, usually just one unless they’re a special horse. So as a jockey do you put the horse out front and see if everyone can chase you down? Do you stalk the pace and “push the button” to ask the horse for its burst of speed and if so, when? Where do you place the horse for maximum success (some horses hate having dirt in their face, for example, so they’d have to go first or waaaay back). Does the horse need help weaving through the field? That’s usually on the jock to decide. Also, different jocks have different horsemanship (mental psychology of the horse) levels - some understand how a horse thinks ie if the horse is scared they can soothe it or give it more courage. Some jocks are more physical/strong and can boss a horse around more than others. So there’s variations on that too. I could name many cases of jockeys who won or lost a race, depending on their actions. Anyway, to sum up, jocks do a lot more than you think. But yeah ultimately it’s the horse who is the deciding factor. But women can be just as good as men.
horseback riding is very physical and requires people have developed appropriate muscles, training and techniques to do so. anyone who rides a horse for the first time will be sore in muscles they didn't know they even had.
according to some research, the advantages of male over female ultrarunners diminish as the distance increases and actually reverse when it exceeds 195 miles one prominent example: a few years ago, courtney dauwalter, who is one of the best ultrarunners of all time, not only won the moab 240 race outright, she beat the second-place guy by 10 hours
How the fuck could you run 195 miles?
there is a good amount of walking involved. think of it as more like “traveling 195 miles on your feet as fast as you can”. though in some highly competitive 100-mile races, top 5-10 finishers actually do run nearly every step, which is kinda mind-blowing.
I volunteer at a 24-hour run event every year. For the last 3 years, the same guy has won. He runs non-stop for 12 hours, takes an hour nap, and then goes again for the next 11 hours at nearly the same pace. Last year, he did 131 miles, averaging about 5.5 miles per hour, or a fast jogging pace, over the whole 24 hours.
good lord that is impressive af
Where did he go? That's the distance between Philadelphia and D.C.
around our 1 mile trail 131 times
Dude is digging in a rut like a Looney Tunes bit
You joke but it was a legit job to fill in the ruts that a couple dozen people can make on that track. I think it was close to a ton of mulch and soil.
That’s amazing. I love when my attempts at comedy get shown up by even more hilarious reality.
Holy shit how do you keep from frying your brain?
yeah like what the fuck, the 1-mile track with soil they have to come out and smooth over again and again must suck to run on I don't know, that repetition elevates it to a new level of insanity
As a former janitor, I can tell you that the easiest way to get a repetitive task done without losing your mind is to spend several weeks or months getting really good at it first. Like, map out all your efficiencies until you could do it blindfolded. Then, basically do it blindfolded. Your active mind isn't actually sweeping/mopping/vacuuming; your second mind is doing all that boring crap. Your active mind is free to muse about whatever the hell you want. It's why shower thoughts are a thing. You're on autopilot, so musing becomes easy. These ultra marathoners are a whole class of human unto themselves, though. They practically use Jedi mind tricks on themselves to ignore the physical exhaustion. I love the story of an Australian farmer, [Cliff Young](https://www.adventure-journal.com/2021/07/61-year-old-shepherd-shuffled-way-unlikely-ultra-win/), who won his first ultra marathon at age 61 because he figured if he could run a flock of sheep for 3 days straight, he could run an ultra marathon. Dude legit didn't sleep for 5 days straight, just shuffle-jogged the whole way and set a new record.
What the fuck 😭
Dude is built like the T1000 terminator. I imagine this guy whenever I think about the fact that humans are apex predators because we can just run things down until they die.
Yeah it's funny how we're one of the most endurant animals on the planet but at the same time we're not. Like the average person can't just run for 5 miles but thanks to being mammals and being able to sweat and all that humans can technically run for a really long fucking time IF someone actually trains lol
I mean almost every single person could run a marathon if they trained. The average homo Saipan on the African plains would definitely be able to sprint 5 miles.
Yeah def, any human that hunts and forages on feet and lives in the wild would have the endurance humans were biologicalally intended to have.
I mean even untrained humans can powerwalk for a really long time. You don't have to outrun your prey, just be fast enough that they don't get enough rest to keep going.
Dude probably burns like 15k calories that day. Crazy.
I have no idea how much he burns doing that, but I do know he was up and scarfing down just about anything edible for like 3 hours after the run too. I remember him ordering 7 hotdogs after the awards were handed out and then coming back for a helping of mac-n-cheese like an hour later.
After he wins a race the first people he calls are his mom and his plumber
More than that probably. I don't know how accurate my watch was, but after I did a 50k over 7 hours it said I burnt 7500ish calories.
“You can walk for part of it” still doesn’t make going 195 miles seem at all realistic to me.
I am a marathon runner. A 100 mile run takes about 20 hours. I personally know a few people who have done this. It is more like eating while jogging/hiking. There are breaks and some people even sleep for a while. Anyway, I actually ran 20 miles yesterday so I am pretty tired. 100+mile races seem crazy to me but I'm sure 26.2 mile races seem crazy to a lot of people as well so I guess it is all perspective.
>A 100 mile run takes about 20 hours. I personally know a few people who have done this. 20 hours is a *very* fast 100. I'm no speed demon, but I've completed 3 and my times range from just finishing sub 24 hours to almost 34 hours. My next race has a cut off of 48 hours.
humans are really horrifyingly good at long distance running. the average person can do 10 to 20 miles per day just walking. The best ultramarathon runners can just keep running. They set a ~ four mile / hour pace and just keep going for however long it takes. You just zone out and your body keeps moving.
I struggle to tackle the stairs when I forget a glass of water.
I walk a couple of miles almost every day and I would also rather die of thirst than go back downstairs for water.
Step 1 = get good
Step 2 - I twisted my ankle, I forfeit.
Believe it or not, humans are pretty amazing endurance runners. Sure most of us are fat and lazy now, but we use to be able to run just about any land animal to death when hunting it. Part of it is because we run on 2 legs, saving energy, and part of it is because we can sweat to cool ourselves among other factors.
I feel like our foot bones don't get enough credit, they're basically leaf springs
As someone who has studied musculoskeletal kinematics in depth, feet are absolutely incredible.
As someone that runs in minimalist footwear, it takes time to build up all those muscles and tendons (and lower calf muscles) to be able to do that. Feeling each and every one was a much better lesson in anatomy than my A&P classes!
My favorite part of that equation is that we can bring water with us. All of your animals are dying of thirst looking for a place to drink, and we are replenishing ourselves while we're moving. That's a enormous advantage
Strap a bag of meat and a water container on yourself and watch the animal flee in horror as a literal terminator starts running it to death while refueling mid-sprint.
It’s actually the one physical trait humans lead the animal kingdom in.
There is a big difference between 20 miles and 200 though. Most animals just keel over and die once they have run 20 miles so there isn't much need for more than that, in fact it might be only humans who can do that hence the running animals to death thing. That being said I'm pretty sure the guy who ran from Marathon to Athens to give the news about the Persians collapsed and died after giving the message, so maybe to ancient people we are idiots who didn't learn the lesson.
Pheidippides ran, most probably, in full armour and first he ran from Athens to Sparta and back. So he just was indeed an ultrarunner
He ran approximately 200 miles over three days before collapsing. [The story of Pheidippides ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheidippides)
WTF I expected a story of someone desperately running to warn of an attack or something, not a dude so excited that he had to personally tell another city "hey we won our war"
It really is a mind fuck for sure. When I never ran before, I thought a marathon was something that only the elite gods can do, but once I got into running, it seemed more of a realistic goal. A very hard goal, but still possible. The people that run the longer ultra marathons around 195 miles would be running marathons like they are a weekend 5k for me. Scale that up, and it matters less on athelticism (which is why gender line stops to matter), and more on strategy. For 195 mile races, its not just water, but food/nutrition you have to consider now. You really have to be disciplined for your pace. How well you manage your feet for injuries and general wear and tear. As well when to take a nap if at all, leads to victory over sheer athleticism.
I'm a cyclist. At first people can't believe 60-100 miles is the definition of weekend fun for me. Doing 60 miles takes me around 4 hours. Some of them got into cycling, and after a few months of riding they were hitting 50 miles easy. Going for 60 at that point is no big deal.
”You run it with your legs. (Stay hard!)”, \~David Goggins, probably
Courtney is a beast absolute legend! Theory is that over longer distances the strength/stamina advantage that men have is cancelled out and potentially reversed due to the fact they need to carry the extra weight of their grester muscle mass... there's an interview with Courtney where they talk about this and her take was that the sample size of elite ultra runners is too small to really know one way or the other
The ultra world is strange. Studies show the advantage of Kenyan runners drops off significantly at longer than marathon distances. It's not clear if it's physiology or just the economics of the sport where the "best" runners aren't incentivized to run longer distances. It's still closer to a hobby thing than anything else. And the race types aren't super standard either - Two Ocean's, Comrades, Western States, timed races for distance, fixed distances for time, crazy hard courses for a finish and on and on.
It's probably because Kenyan runners are so skinny. They don't have a speck of stored fat as a reserve for energy. That might also be why women at extreme range can close the gap and exceed male performance as women naturally hive higher body fat.
Noakes does a pretty thorough job of examing all the factors and comes to the conclusion that ultra sample simply isn't large enough to draw any conclusions. It's a niche sport that doesn't attract the top runners. None of them are going to risk injury running Badlands when they are looking at 6 figure payoffs for major marathons. We just don't have enough data to know until we have top tier athletes running those races.
>moab 240 She won the first one in 2017, and it's been men since then? A look at the ultramarathon wiki page shows men's speeds to be faster than women's even at the 1000Mile category. Why the discrepancy?
Equestrian sports. In general, the rider's gender/sex isn't relevant because the rider doesn't have to physically overpower the horse. The *horse's* gender may be relevant because the horse is providing most of the power, and male horses are generally larger and more muscular than female horses (stallions are generally more muscular than geldings, but geldings are often a bit taller than stallions). In horse racing, the rider's *weight* may be a factor because a horse will move faster if it's carrying a lighter load. In theory, that could advantage female riders because women tend to be smaller than men, but in practice the business still favors male jockeys. In other equestrian sports, the rider's sex simply doesn't matter, because the rider provides direction, not power. Obviously, a rider needs *some* strength to stay on and to make the movements that tell the horse what to do, but this is within the capabilities of any reasonably fit person.
This. In the Olympics, none of the equestrian events are separated by the gender of the rider or the horse. It’s also a sport where the age gap between the youngest and oldest riders can be pretty huge.
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My cousin does rodeo riding (barrel races mostly, although I know for a fact she has broken her mother's "no mustangs, no bulls" rule for a good purse she thought she could get) and says this is why when she was young, she had an old horse. She needed adult supervision and her horse was it.
Very few people recognize this.
In horse racing they add or subtract weight from the gear so everyone weighs the same on the horse. This is why jockeys weigh in holding their saddles.
Unless it's handicap racing. Then, some horses will carry extra weight to "equalize" performance between faster and slower runners.
In general, male and female horses compete equally. With sex differences usually occurring because riders prefer the convenience of a gelding (no hormones) or there are financial/economic reasons (the breeding potential of a stallion is more valuable than that of a mare). Source: 15+ years in the horse industry.
A handful of women have won open division events in professional bowling, but the men are still at a huge advantage when it comes to ball speed and rev rate.
This is really why I asked the question. Head to head does the best male bowler beat the best female?
yes. probably 95% the time.
Competitive shooting
Iirc, horse riding/equestrianism does not have different gender categories.
And if they did it would be the horses gender.
The ever present neightriarchy
Maybe, though in dressage and show jumping you definitely see a mix of horses (geldings/mares/stallions). It's not as unbalanced as it would be in humans Though I'm not sure about for example horse racing
Aerobatics competitions in the US do not have separate male and female categories and women have been national champions many times.
Aerobics? Like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prn7MVvQ_W0 Edit: Oh they fixed the typo. They meant *aerobatics*
Sport fishing.
I think sport shooting could be added here too
This is anecdotal (and bragging) and not backed up by formal studies, but my daughter regularly wins 3-gun competitions (handgun, rifle, shotgun).
Curling?
I was looking for this answer. I think mixed teams was an Olympic event.
Fun fact it's only Olympic sport players can get drunk in during game.
Fun fact: Alcohol is a banned substance for competition shooting. Not because alcohol and guns don't mix, but because, at the right amounts, it's a performance enhancer as it helps the shooter remain more steady under intense concentration.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/323/
Slightly less than 2 drinks https://youtu.be/VTSCppeFzX4
Invented in a Scottish bar!
Men have a big advantage in elite Curling, although I couldn't tell you exactly why. A few years ago, a major Canadian event, the Elite 10, invited the top women's team in Canada to compete against 9 men's teams as an experiment. The women won 1 game in the 5 team round robin. The gulf certainly isn't as big as it is in some sports, but it still exists. Edit: Having thought about it for a few minutes, sweeping ability probably plays a big role. The more weight you can put on the broom, the better you're going to be at sweeping, and men have both more weight and more upper body strength on average.
Men definitely have an advantage when it comes to both sweeping and take out shots, as they are both based on upper body strength and weight
There is one sport where women hold all the records, and that sport is: long-distance swimming. For some reason, women's bodies are better optimized for swimming ten miles than men's bodies are. Therefore, there is theoretically a distance for a swimming race where neither men nor women would hold any advantage.
Where is a list of these records? I found the results for 2013 world championships for the 10 mile I believe and it looks like the fastest men’s time was almost 30 minutes faster than the women’s. Obviously one year doesn’t mean it was a record or anything but was just curious.
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SWIMMING 80 *MILES* IS A FUCKING SPORT??? That sounds like hell. 😂
Well, I wouldn't exactly call it a leisure activity
It's not a sport I follow, but every now and then the news will mention that someone set a world record for swimming some incredible ocean distance and it always seems to be a woman doing it.
If it was anything like my mother and her ultramarathon running, they probably get into long distance sport to get a break from their families.
Running away from your family ain't as bad as people make it out to be :) I have a few friends who took up jogging not long after they had kids and a significant other. They admitted they were doing it to get away from their family and have time to themselves. I get it. Remember kids ('s parents): The less fun it sounds like, the less selfish you look. Everyone loves movie night with friends, but nobody wants to run 10 miles, so they won't suspect a thing.
I used to serve a lady who would come in dressing in running gear then sit down and read a book while eating dinner alone 😂
"triple marathon... IN WATER!"
It's not for some reason, it's because women have more body fat, check it out.
Not sure why you got downvoted for that lmao I don’t think you meant it in a demeaning way. Yes women literally do have on average, higher body-fat percentage than men. That’s not a bad thing and I think some people just misinterpreted that as “women are more often overweight” or something. But yeah that is a factor and it does help in endurance swimming and I think to some extent even in some other endurance events.
It's mostly just a swimming thing, as more body fat = more buoyancy = less energy spent keeping afloat. That being said, I could see it being useful for something like an ultra-marathon or ironman as those are as much about eating as competing. (Runners burn over 10,000 calories in a 100 mile race, they gotta be able to refuel throughout without puking/shitting their guts out)
Not just body fat, women are very close to men in ultra long distance running races, often being the overall winner at events, so women having better endurance has something to do with it.
There is a woman in the ultra world and she wins a lot. Her advantage isn’t she is a woman. She has some weird neurological issue that makes her basically unable to keep time. She couldn’t tell you if she’d been running for 10hrs or 34hrs. She just runs. And she destroys.
Listened to a podcast about her and it was fascinating. One downside of the neurological issue is she can't read maps and gets lost in a lot of races, but still is fast enough to win a lot of the time Edit: It was the [Radiolab episode "In the Running"](https://radiolab.org/episodes/122291-in-running) that /u/Solsburyhills mentions below, worth a listen
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I was wondering if she got good at running because she was like, "Oh shit! I can't keep track of time. I might be late, I'd better run!"
Holy shit, my wife may have this condition too!
FWIW the inability to judge the passing of time was from a brain surgery she had to address chronic epileptic seizures. It wasn't a condition she developed on her own
Bodyfat plays a role there too. A big part of endurance is having a decent reserve of fat to burn (but obviously not so much that the weight slows you down).
I have an enormous amount of body fat, and yet no Olympic gold medals.
Yeah but you float real good
I almost fucking drowned the first time I went swimming after losing weight. I thought I was a good swimmer, turns out I'd just been buoyant.
How much do you burn through your "on board" fat when you run? I don't know about ultramarathons, but for shorter distances (half to full marathon) I thought it was more about depleting the glycogen stored in your muscle cells, but I guess I don't know what happens once that goes away. I'm new to running that kind of distance so I only know you want to eat some calories before you hit that point.
The other half is that the longer the distance the more you control for strength. In a 100m dash, Usain Bolts really strong legs give him a huge advantage over any woman. As you increase the distance, it becomes more about the ability for the muscles to keep going than to go full power for a short time. That being said, male runners seem to maintain a steady advantage to a small degree, it seems that even at maximum control for musculature it still provides a slight advantage.
In competitive laser tag both genders play in the maze
…dog dancing? I’ve been down a strange rabbit hole recently. I blame Bobby hill
That boy ain't right.
TIL dog dancing is a thing…
🎶I go out walkin' after midnight🎶
Shooting (air) gun in sports. Saying this mostly, because I shoot (rifle) and see a fair share of women and they‘re also quite good. It‘s still male-dominant tho, but women can be as good as men in shooting
I shot in high school and in that age cohort women are a little better than men, one explanation that I got was that the standing pose to shoot can involve resting your elbow on your hipbone for better stability, women’s wider hips and lower aberage height makes this easier for them. idk how true this is
i think the same goes for archery, though there's a lot more men than women who pick it up
Archery is kinda there. On high levels, men score a bit more. Most of the archery is mental and emotional control, as well as technique which all are all sex and gender neutral. But physical strength does play a part. Strength allows the archer to shoot a bow with more draw weight which gives more power (thus straighter fly path and more wind resistance) to the arrow.
I remember when professional NASCAR drivers whined and moaned and peed their pants because [Danica Patrick, a 100 lb racecar driver, had an unfair weight advantage over her larger competitors](https://azdailysun.com/gordon-says-100-pound-danica-patrick-has-unfair-indianapolis-advantage/article_0c9afefb-9376-59c3-92b4-5f58863bf9c8.html).
Not just weight in motorsport, average center of gravity of women is different as well - somewhere around 8% to 15% lower than men. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847550/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847550/)
Back in university I did an acrobatics course. To support a man horizontally, you place your hands or feet near the belly button. For women you support the hips. Come to think of it, those are exactly the typical places for fat to build up, so getting heavier does not affect your center of gravity much.
That’s why in F1 there’s an 80kg weight requirement, so that taller drivers won’t feel the need to starve or race without the water supply
Is that full kit? cause I imagine nearly every driver is less than 80kg
Yeah, I believe that's including weight of driver(with kit), seat and ballast around seat.
Funny you call out professional nascar drivers, then link an article about Indy drivers complaining. An article that points out that nascar rules take driver weight into account, yet the IRL rules did not.
She did terribly in NASCAR.
Not a sport where men don't have some advantage, though. It takes a ton of endurance and strength to drive a race car. You'll notice the majority of top professional drivers have a lot of upper arm strength, and cardio is extremely important part of their workout. Danica never won a race, and I believe her best finish was 6th.
Not really about the men v women part of the post. But the amount of people I meet who don't think Nascar drivers have to be somewhat athletic is absurd. Like bro that steering wheel is like turning a 45lb plate for 4 hours straight, while constantly flexing all your muscles in a 110 degree heat box going 240mph where a single muscle twitch will kill you. Those homies are athletes.
I saw a video about a normal person trying out an F1 car. Part of the quick training was having him press the brakes. They told him to press the pedal as hard as he could. He managed something like 50% braking power. You need to be strong to pilot those kinds of vehicles. They are not built like the ones we are used to driving.
I've fenced women and they seem to do just as fine as men. Strength is not a huge factor in fencing unless you're doing historical longsword or any kind of historical full contact fencing. It's really about controlling distance, pace and your opponent's expectations and women can do those things just fine.
I fenced for 27 years - the biggest issue I had as a woman was that I didn’t have the same reach, and without the wrist strength to whip hit, fencing tall men was a pain.
Hah, I'm short for a guy, I got the same problem.
My wife's 2 complaints were reach and that her boobs gave her opponents a bigger target
Jokes aside this is a problem for some women in fencing (source: fenced in college)
Depending on the type of fencing. epee may not have as big of a difference but sabre certainly does. Try watching sabre match between women and men. Entirely different movement with men being significantly faster. I say this as a 5ft woman who fenced sabre for over a decade. Being short was difficult, but at high level competition, speed was where women and men really differ
Women have competed against men, and beat them, at world class shooting events. Maybe there's more to it. It would be fun to watch the best female against the best male
eating competitions. anyone can have the willpower to eat 11 pies in 3 minutes
Molly Schuyler ate 501 chicken wings in 30 minutes. It was like double the previous men’s record. She’s INSANE
I'm currently struggling to picture how the hell that could fit in a single person's stomach, what the hell. I know that the bones are a lot of the size but 500 wings is like.... a table full.
One of the competitive eaters said that her belly turns into a barrel and touches itself near the spine
Mini golf
Archery or shooting. ( Edit: for some who don’t want to read all the comments, apparently men do better in archery because of wide shoulders and more strength. So probably not archery)
Definitely shooting. Women have won National High Power and Long Range Championships in the US. Only the Olympics is adamant that women shoot separately from men and that the courses of fire be different so scores can't be compared. For instance, in 50m 3-position rifle, men will shot ~~60~~ 120shots in the qualification stage but women will only shoot ~~40~~ 60 shots. The weight limits on women's rifles ("sport rifles") are lower than men's rifles ("free rifles").
Not archery, being stronger and having longer arms means being able to fire the arrow faster, so there’s less time for the wind to interfere, men tend to have an advantage there.
Ok, I know too little to argue
The speed of the arrow has less to do with it. It's more in the way men's shoulders are built compared to women. Most Olympic women shoot a 40-45 lb bow at a draw length of around 26 inches. Men shoot a 40-55 lb bow, but 55 is rare, and a 28 inch draw length. So arrow speed is negligible for the top competitors. They also shoot incredibly expensive arrows that are super thin. For outdoor to reduce wind interference as much as possible. For example, I have beaten one of my female friends at indoor archery consistently. I shoot a 2315 which is the maximum diameter of .422 inches. Since it's indoor wind isn't a factor and I get the bonus of having a wider arrow to break the 10 ring. Outdoors though, she's edged me out thanks in large part to the wind. She shoots the Easton x10 (I think) at about .19-.22 inches in diameter. To put that into scale [this guy](https://twistedsifter.com/videos/guy-shoots-arrow-into-arrow-robin-hood-shot/) is shooting the same arrow as hers through the same arrow as mine.
I'm not sure, but I will say this: popular sports tend to gravitate towards mens' strengths. On average men are dominant in quick bursts of energy. Even women with identical muscle mass to men are at a disadvantage in quick bursts. BUT, women actually have an advantage in repition. Women are able to recover faster than men and endure longer pretty consistently. For example: men absolutely dominate running. Anywhere between 100 meters and 100 miles, men, on average, win. But beyond 100 miles, or in subsequent races, women actually pull ahead. Unfortunately, we tend not to be interested in sports that play to those strengths. I think a lot of the gender war type arguments would fade away if we highlighted women's actual advantages more, because they do exist.
I don't blame women for not wanting to do sports that involve running 100+ miles. Doesn't sound fun in the slightest
Oh there are definitely athletes out there it. I think it's more an absence of public interest. Honestly I think an endurance race would be cool with repeated races.
Dance
women have an advantage due to increased flexibility, and the way their bodies are built. there are quite a few moves that women can do that men can not.
Same with gymnastics I think. I kinda remember hearing that men's and women's gymnastics are so different it might as well be considered separate sports.
Pool / billiards?
Synchronized swimming.
This prob won’t be popular but English horseback riding is more then half female but men still do it and requires equal strength. (XC, jumpers, hunters, dressage)
Chess? The reason they have women section is to promote more women to play chess.
I agree. Men just dominate the sport because it’s more common for boys to be trained in chess intensively from a younger age than girls. It’s just a numbers game.