\doc\web\99\05\sailrun.txt From: SteveSlr@aol.com Date sent: Wed, 24 Mar 1999 00:38:34 EST To: h-bd@egroups.com Copies to: bmallon@acpub.duke.edu, hoberman@mail.utexas.edu, Mariahbn@aol.com, Stephen Seiler Subject: [h-bd] Growing Gender Gap in Running Steve Sailer here: This week The Sunday Times (of London) published in their famous Letters column my rebuttal of their article "Superwomen athletes get set to make men also-rans": SINCE 1988 the gender gap between male and female world class-runners has not shrunk, but grown (Superwomen athletes get set to make men also-rans, News, last week). Sports physiologist Dr Stephen Seiler and I documented this in the American magazine, National Review [http://members.aol.com/steveslr/gendrgap.htm]. In the 1990s, in the 10 Olympic events where men and women run under identical conditions, 35 male world records have been broken, compared with only six for females. The sex difference in track medallists' times at the 1996 Olympics was the greatest since the 1972 games. Why did women Olympic medallists run 0.6% more slowly in 1996 than in 1988? Largely because of better testing for artificial male hormones and the arrests of the East German steroidmeisters. Since women average only a tenth as much muscle-building testosterone as men, they benefited more than men from the lax steroid testing in the 1970s and 1980s. Also, contrary to your assumption that while women may not be able to compete with men in strength, they will equal men in endurance, the gender gap is actually slightly greater in the distance races than in the sprints. Women may eventually prove better than men at marathon swimming. But since that is one of the very few sports where a higher body fat percentage is an advantage (for buoyancy and insulation), that is the exception that proves the rule that women will never be able to compete against men in the great majority of self-propelled sports like football, basketball, track and the like. Steve Sailer Chicago, Illinois http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/Sunday-Times/frontpage.html?33167 63 P.S. The history of track and field since the mid-Fifties provides a motherlode of data on the impact of male hormones, since that history (e.g., the rise and fall of East German women competitors) can't be understood without exploring the effect of steroids. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ eGroups Spotlight: "Playsandplaywrights" - Write and analyze plays for production. http://offers.egroups.com/click/248/4 eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/h-bd Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com