Tuesday, March 21, 2017

It's all a sham

Recently, a transgender person named Laurel Hubbard won the "over 90kg" category for women's weightlifting at the Australian International with a total lift of 268kg, about 19kg greater than the runner up, but far short of the world record of 348kg set by Tatiana Kashirina of Kazakhstan--suspended in 2006 for failing doping tests. 

Now what's interesting here is that Hubbard's advantage in weight--9kg above all other competitors--scales nicely with the advantage in terms of results--8% or so.  In other words, having been born male does not seem to confer a disproportionate advantage vs. women in the sport.

How is that so?  Well, it might have something to do with the fact that at least 137 weightlifters have been caught doping, which would in turn imply that the actual rate of doping is likely much higher, and would then imply that--like we learned during the scandal with Lance Armstrong--the sport is a sham at elite levels.   The problem is not that sports federations are allowing the transgender to compete now, but rather that they've been allowing them to compete for half a century. 

4 comments:

Hearth said...

Yes, thanks for making the sport yet less appealing to most women... appreciate that, dude.

Of COURSE all the skeletal muscle you built up as a dude, competing as a dude... that all disappeared when you started taking estrogen. Uh huh. Yes, muscle disintegrates. Sure it does.

If you're interested, it looks like the picture taken is of the snatch lift, which is generally the heavier of the two lifts, and from my calculations, he has 363lb over his head.

Bike Bubba said...

Agreed on the advantages, but still worth noting is he's still not doing as well as the theoretically genuine women out of the old Warsaw Pact and China. Wanna guess where the East German coaches went after 1989? If you said "China", go to the head of the class.

Sad to say, transsexuals have been in elite sport since the Soviets figured out steroids in time to dominate weightlifting in the Helsinki Olympics of 1952.

Hearth said...

I heard someone snark that that is why he changed genders, so he could win again. Note that weightlifting is a sport with age ranges... 45 plus is "Masters" and is graded much differently than 25yo.

He's not moving as much weight as the dude (real dude) who dislocated his elbow during the olympics, who was several grades lighter. (Coach decided we needed to watch that video to remind us why to reposition our hands between cleaning and jerking - no, the names of the lifts aren't my fault). That dude was C&Jing 3x his bodyweight.

Bike Bubba said...

:^) I'm thinking it'll be a bigger deal in running sports where hips matter, sports like track, cross country, hoops, softball, and the like. Think "Caster Semenya". It will be merely irritating until a few real girls get hurt by the fake girls in ways that make clear that XY matters, and then all Hell will break loose as the fathers, brothers, and boyfriends of the real girls do what they need to do to prevent it happening again.