redfiona99

Winter Sports Rant

Tue, 31 Dec 2019 16:09:40 GMT

The Eurosport commentators have stopped doing it so much now that Austria are less dominant in ... everything alpine and most things ski jumping but I still get significantly miffed when if the Austrian team do something, it's because their mean and evil but when someone else, particularly the Americans and Norwegians, do the same thing, it's fine. For example, when an Austrian is replaced by one of the juniors it's because the ski federation are impatient. When the Norwegians do it, it's because they have strength in depth.

It's not that the various Austrian winter sports federations are nice. They're not. They're stubborn, baby-eating fiends who haven't heard of patience and believe nothing other than first place is worth it. It's just that that is true of all the winter sports federations of any country. Normally, if they show patience, it's a sign that there's no depth, no young 'uns coming up.

Also, when do the commentators expect the teams to blood in the young ones? Or are you supposed to let athletes carry on floating on a wave of past glories until they retire?

Most annoying.

(I should be more zen because they have been being really nice about Hirscher, but they've only been this nice about him since he's retired. They also seem to be unwilling to recognise the awesome that is Michaela Schiffrin.)

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About the IAAF's idiotic new testosterone rule

Sun, 12 May 2019 19:01:00 GMT

I begin with a warning that there is bad language in this post, because the decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Caster Semenya’s appeal against the IAAF’s new testosterone rule is egregious bullshit.

Let’s begin with the obvious. If they felt that there needed to be a rule change, the IAAF, the governing body for athletics, could have changed the rules without naming the athlete involved. Choosing to name her has led to the intimate medical details of a young woman being published across the world’s media. That’s a pretty shitty thing to do and Caster Semenya is dealing with it with a level of grace under fire that most of us would fail to achieve.

And the rule is obviously targeted at her. The IAAF have made a new testosterone limit that only applies to athletics events of distances from 400 m to 1609 m (1 mile). These are the events in which Semenya races. It does not include shorter distances, where athletes regularly fail drugs test for anabolic steroids, because they’re useful for sprints. But apparently the IAAF doesn’t care about that. It also doesn’t care about introducing these limits to the throwing events in the field, where so many champions have tested positive for anabolic steroids. No, the only events they choose to put this limit on are ones that Semenya might run in. Including the 400 m makes that obvious. Because she doesn’t normally run it, but she has run it. They’ve literally only chosen events she might run in. Because it’s not about fucking fairness, it’s about punishing Semenya for a quirk of her birth.

The IAAF claim they’ve chosen these events because there aren’t enough athletes with DSD in the other events (1). Which pretty much proves they’re lying about why they’re doing it. If it was about protecting female sports, they’d introduce this stupid rule across the board to safeguard those events in the future. But they’ve only introduced it in the one set of events where an athlete with a DSD has been successful. It does suggest that DSDs are not the advantage the IAAF are saying they are. They are not protecting sport, they are punishing Semenya for her successes.

It’s interesting to see what the IAAF choose to regard as an unfair physiological advantage. We’re all mutants. How do you decide what is an unfair advantage, and what is not?

People with advantageous mutations and physical properties are found throughout sport. Murali’s elbow in the cricket, Andy Roddick’s shoulder in tennis, Mia Hamm’s ability to sweat less than anyone else and Michael Phelps’s reduced lactic acid production (2,3).

(section removed by the legal department)

If Caster Semenya was American, there wouldn’t be a rule change, she’d be on Ellen being praised for her bravery.

I want to focus on the different way in which Semenya and Phelps have been treated. Semenya is being hounded for her ability to train harder and to run faster than her competitors. Phelps was lauded for the results he got, because he could train harder and swim faster than his competitors. He was never expected to take lactic acid injections to make him perform like “a normal man”.

Why are some performance advantages alright, and others not?

I don’t have an answer for that, but I would love to know what the IAAF’s answer to the question would be, because as it stands, they have created a very poor rule for reasons that make no sense.

References:

1 - https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/apr/30/caster-semenya-runners-discrimination-case
2 - Game On: How the Pressure to Win at All Costs Endangers Youth Sports, and What Parents Can Do About It by Tom Farrey
3 - https://www.smh.com.au/sport/is-it-a-genetic-flaw-that-makes-phelps-the-greatest-20080816-gdsqwk.html

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Women's Cycling

Sun, 22 Jul 2018 18:55:45 GMT

(In which I have similar problems to ioplokon but about women's cycling.)

There is no women's Tour de France. I wish there was. I am 100% behind most of the many and varied attempts to get one.

But the whole "x amateur women are riding it to try and get one" that's getting all the media attention this year strikes me as the worst possible way.

Partly this is the media's fault. The first week of the Tour is the one with all the boring flat stages, so the media look for anything they can to write about. And this is an interesting thing to write about.

Unfortunately, it means that they aren't covering the Giro Rosa*. Given the Giro is the only one of the grand tours that actually has a women's race, this is frustrating. Especially as it was such a good race. Annemiek van Vleuten is just amazing.

Compare the coverage of the amateur race with the coverage of La Course, where the the UCI Pro women's teams race the most interesting stage of the Tour in the morning before the men. La Course is down to one stage which is annoying but hopefully the joy of crowd might convince them to give it a second stage again.

Also, see, I told you van Vleuten was amazing.

Another annoying thing is the amount of face time Skoda are getting for backing the amateur race. If you've got that much money, Skoda, you can fund a goddamn women's pro tour race! (Sorry!)

The other thing that annoyed me was the people who were up in arms about the lack of women's Tour but were willing to ignore the Giro Rosa. It could be because the media don't cover the Giro Rosa so people don't know about it. Or it could be people just enjoy getting enraged without doing some background research.

I think we're more likely to get a women's Tour if we makes the most of the excellent riders we have now. That wil make it clear to sponsors that they can get recognition and sales money (or possibly tax write-offs) by sponsoring them or a race. This involves building on the successes of the Giro Rosa, and races like it. To an extent, we are getting there, just look at the number of UCI pro women's teams. Also look at how many of them attached to men's teams, suggesting a more stable funding stream.

Build from what we've got works better than build from nothing.

*The pink thing isn't pinkification, it's the colour of the original race sponsors so the men's jersey is also the pink jersey.

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Mama Do - Why motherhood doesn't have to be the end of Serena Williams's career

Sat, 08 Jul 2017 17:37:17 GMT

The minute Serena Williams announced that she was pregnant, various journalists dusted down their "is this the end of (famous sportswoman)'s career" articles.

This is annoying for a variety of reasons.

The first is that it really is always the same article, with just the name of the sportswoman and the sport changed.

The second is that, if Serena chooses to come back, it's not the end of her career. Sportswomen can, do and have achieved after having children. For instance, Olympic silver in the heptathlon, generally regarded as the most physically demanding of the athletics disciplines. Or you know, being the Flying Housewife.

But I suppose they don't play tennis. Like oh, Kim Clijsters, who won the US Open after giving birth, and she's not the physical force that Serena is.

Those are sport or related reasons. The remainder of the reasons are more society based.
The social construct of "the perfect mother" appears to exist only to make all mothers feel bad. (Any mothers reading this, you are amazing.) The perfect mother, she does not and cannot exist.

More than that, the extreme self-sacrifice that this ridiculous construct demands, that a mother no longer has her own life outside that of the identity of mother isn't safe or healthy for the mother, her children or any attendant partners.

Reporters and journalists are intelligent people and shouldn't be buying into it or propagating it.

There's also this weird idea that Serena (or any other woman) will be so overcome by the awesomeness of having a child that she will not be interested in pursuing her career. I don't have children, but my mother would like to tell you that this is nonsense. I have her permission to quote her.

The interesting double standard is that it's assumed that no man would be so distracted by having children that he'd want to stop his career. There's no "will Murray stop playing tennis now that there's a second mini Murray on the way?" articles. If kids are so all-consumingly awesome, you'd think both parents would be affected.

Every woman's choice is different, and it is her choice.

I realise journalists have to fill up the column inches so how to earn their pay. Maybe next time though write about a British (change nationality as applicable) junior that's doing good rather than digging out the old "is this the end of (famous sportswoman)'s career" article again.

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