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Comment by akkat | Hacker News Reader

Why do men and women play separately? My guess is because men would almost always win against women. But in marathons Nigerians have a statistical advantage, should marathons be separated into Nigerians and not Nigerians? In most winter sports athletes from colder climates do better, should winter sports be separated based on the climate of the athletes's home country? People from Russia do better at chess... I assume most people would say that the people in my examples shouldn't be separated. So why should men and women be separated?

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I think you mean Kenyans, on the other side of the continent. But the point remains; although I don't think they are equivalent.

oops, that's what I meant. Too late to edit

Men and women are very different physically, men are almost always going to be significantly stronger. We do not have the same amount of difference between people from different countries. The average man is much stronger than the average women, but the average person from Nigeria is probably not much faster at marathons than the average person from Canada.

Does this argument still apply on Olympics? They are nothing like average people, so I'd guess both genders push the body to the limit.

Yes, but the difference is huge.

Consider the 100m dash.

In 2016 Olympics, in the final heat, the slowest man ran 4% faster than the women's world record (which has remained unbroken for 30 years).

Innate differences between the sexes are enormous, even at elite levels.

According to conventional physiology statistics (where you figure most traits are normally distributed) it applies even more to the Olympics — population differences are more pronounced at the extremes, not less.

To put it another way, the difference between a near-average man and a near-average woman (per a normal approximation) could easily go either way. The difference between a top 1% man and a top 1% woman is much more likely to be skewed toward the man.

Sure, but why does curling need to separate men and women?

Seriously, of all things, this one eludes me completely.

Men and women have different potential. A woman can put in the same work in the same facility and not reach the level of a man. There's nothing she can do about.

People from different climates/backgrounds have different advantages/disadvantages in life, but on average their potential is the same. A Jamaican team could become the best bobsledders in the world if they spent enough time/money/effort on it, though I do admit they are heavily disadvantaged.

The Jamaican bobsled team was the source for the movie Cool Runnings.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_national_bobsleigh_tea...

(Unfortunately, in this case, they lost control during a qualifying run.)

To play the devil's advocate, if you extend the argument the parent commenter makes, you could say that a Canadian sprinter has a lower potential because the ______ ethnic sprinter has a higher percentage of faster-twitch muscle due to genetics. The Canadian sprinter could work as hard has he can but never reach the theoretical limit of the _____ ethnic sprinter.

The same argument can be made for VO2 max, armspan, leg stride, etc. Note that I'm not actually advocating for a combined male/female competition nor a split based on genetic potentials.

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