France's sports minister Marina Ferrari says the country won't legalize genetic testing before the LA28 Olympics, and says the cost to athletes is among the reasons why she opposes the IOC's policy.
In my opinion, sports segregation stems naturally from obsessive competition. Everybody is born differently, and some people will have an unfair advantage over others due to their natural genetics. The problem isn’t how to have fair competition because that’s impossible. The problem is with competition itself. Maybe people should just accept that the end goal is for people to have fun, and just let everyone in and whatever happen.
Separation by height & weight/BMI and skill makes the most sense, they’re the most reliable predictors of comparable athletic performance regardless of gender
This is interesting and I never really thought of it like that. I do wonder what amount of crap people will give you about BMI. I’m surprised to not already see a reply about it.
I completely understand why people react to discussion of BMI in any context with anything from skepticism to hostility, a lifetime of having unhealthy western beauty standards and eating disorder shit shoved in your face in every media format will do that. What we need is a standard scale for general categorization of body type/shape/size by comparable physical ability, most likely based on muscle to total body mass ratio and limb length. There’s something to be said for the differing growth rates for slow vs fast twitch muscle between people who are estrogen vs testosterone dominant and how it affects endurance vs strength, but there is no way to grow stronger without growing larger/heavier. Skill level will definitely still need to be accounted for separately, but ranking systems within competitive sports aren’t exactly unprecedented either.
I think we could even be more specific in the sports seperation and let each sport figure out specific physical qualities to group their competitors into. Let me try an example:
Runners could be grouped by leg and arm to body ratio (I think it’s pretty uncontroversial to say that long-legged and -armed people have an inherent advantage in running on flat ground)
Probably the same for swimmers…and spear throwing…okay, fuck, maybe I don’t know enough about sports to find a differing example or there’s no olympic sport where small and slender people have a natural advantage over talls. Maybe archery? I could imagine that a beefy upper body is more important in archery than having long arms (or at least more important than having long legs)?
I wanted to continue with “have these physical qualities as baseline groupings and allow individuals who over- or underperform despite their physicality jump into a higher/lower grouping”, which I still think is a good idea and I’m not sure if that isn’t already a thing. I’m not a sports people, as you may gather by reading this
In my opinion, sports segregation stems naturally from obsessive competition. Everybody is born differently, and some people will have an unfair advantage over others due to their natural genetics. The problem isn’t how to have fair competition because that’s impossible. The problem is with competition itself. Maybe people should just accept that the end goal is for people to have fun, and just let everyone in and whatever happen.
Separation by height & weight/BMI and skill makes the most sense, they’re the most reliable predictors of comparable athletic performance regardless of gender
This is interesting and I never really thought of it like that. I do wonder what amount of crap people will give you about BMI. I’m surprised to not already see a reply about it.
I completely understand why people react to discussion of BMI in any context with anything from skepticism to hostility, a lifetime of having unhealthy western beauty standards and eating disorder shit shoved in your face in every media format will do that. What we need is a standard scale for general categorization of body type/shape/size by comparable physical ability, most likely based on muscle to total body mass ratio and limb length. There’s something to be said for the differing growth rates for slow vs fast twitch muscle between people who are estrogen vs testosterone dominant and how it affects endurance vs strength, but there is no way to grow stronger without growing larger/heavier. Skill level will definitely still need to be accounted for separately, but ranking systems within competitive sports aren’t exactly unprecedented either.
Enlightening post on BMI: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109917011319803148
Thanks for sharing! I knew some of this but a whole lot was new, saving for later reference
Reminds me of these absolutely ripped MFs that have higher BMI than my tubby ass.
BMI is for sure not a great system
I think we could even be more specific in the sports seperation and let each sport figure out specific physical qualities to group their competitors into. Let me try an example: Runners could be grouped by leg and arm to body ratio (I think it’s pretty uncontroversial to say that long-legged and -armed people have an inherent advantage in running on flat ground) Probably the same for swimmers…and spear throwing…okay, fuck, maybe I don’t know enough about sports to find a differing example or there’s no olympic sport where small and slender people have a natural advantage over talls. Maybe archery? I could imagine that a beefy upper body is more important in archery than having long arms (or at least more important than having long legs)?
I wanted to continue with “have these physical qualities as baseline groupings and allow individuals who over- or underperform despite their physicality jump into a higher/lower grouping”, which I still think is a good idea and I’m not sure if that isn’t already a thing. I’m not a sports people, as you may gather by reading this
I’m not any more qualified than you are but that sounds good to me, we can hire some sports scientists and make them figure it out