Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/08/20/organizers-unprepared-as-woman.html
…
17 Likes
What a wonderful time to be alive.
27 Likes
This story makes me giggle. How f—ing awesome.
For future races, they instead plan to issue trophies to the top six runners irrespective of gender.
This will also help people who are non-binary. I am so all for this. So great.
49 Likes
Strange-- I had been hearing for years that in ultra-marathons women tended to dominate men. The race organizers don’t sound very organized if they didn’t know this.
23 Likes
Still - it wouldn’t have been fair if a trans woman was competing in the race…/s
21 Likes
They should just have “Winner” and “First Loser” just like everybody else.
17 Likes
A few days ago a woman, Fiona Kolbinger, won the Transcontinental Race, a self-supported race from Bulgaria to Brest, in the Atlantic coast of France, non-stop, with a self-selected route that has to pass by a few checkpoints. (A few people seem to be still racing).
A woman has the world record for distance cycled in a year.
Is also not that rare that a woman wins the general classification of 100 km races. Men specialists can be faster on a good day, but women tend to be more consistent. This was “only” 50 km, but a trail, the pace indicates that it was hard enough.
In general, as a endurance sport approaches survival, women get more chances.
A lot has been speculated about how the long distances were the latest added to the women running events, there was no marathon in the Olympics until 1984, and are in those distances where they are closest to men.
16 Likes
they instead plan to issue trophies to the top six runners irrespective of gender.
You would figure that’s how it would work already, but perhaps this makes too much sense.
15 Likes
Was just going to say, I love a story with a happy ending!
4 Likes
Me too. It shouldn’t be a surprise any more that women seem to be particularly suited to endurance events.
7 Likes
unfortunately for Richard, race organizers never anticipated a woman might win, so no corresponding prize exists for gents
First, congratulations Ellie Pell if you’re reading this.
Second, Why the holy heck did it take a woman to win to make the decision “oh, I guess we’ll give out six prizes to make sure a man gets one”.
18 Likes
In life, as in sports.
14 Likes
As I understand it, women in general have better discipline than men and have higher pain tolerance [I’ve been corrected in the responses] . That may give them an advantage in long distance running. But I’m no expert and could easily be wrong.
3 Likes
Boy, I say that way too often…
10 Likes
Next: Big Backyard Ultra!
Why is gender an issue at all? The person who runs fastest gets first prize. Female, male, trans, ambiguous gender; race, hair color, who has the longest toes . . . . it’s a competition. It’s about who finishes first.
4 Likes
You go, gurl.
12 Likes
No, no, no. It’s myths like this that lead to our pain not being taken seriously. We don’t have a higher pain tolerance, we’ve just learned that no one gives a fuck if we’re suffering.
33 Likes
I stand corrected.
9 Likes
I’ll go you one better. Why are there prizes? The people who run, run. Let’s nobody keep score or pay attention to who finishes in what place.
That’s actually a workable thing. (There’s a “fun run” every week or so where I live.)
But if you want to have a competition then you have to acknowledge that factors like sex, age, experience, size, and so forth will create inequities that make the idea of “competition” sort of a farce, and in practice exclude a lot of people from any kind of participation. This isn’t exactly controversial. Sports have been organized this way for pretty much as long as sports have been in any way inclusive.
There’s always room for discussion about where those lines should be drawn. Intersex and trans athletes are forcing a much-needed debate about whether we’re really talking about biological sex or gender when we divide athletes that way. But if you want competition and to not be exclusionary, then you can’t just leave it there.
10 Likes
