It seems that in the world of endurance sports the newest and most feared put down to male competitors is "getting chicked".
In other words, being beaten by a female competitor.
In a recent interview 3X Ironman champ Chrissie Wellington was asked if she though about "chicking" Lance Armstrong in 2011 as he intends to race the Kona Ironman World Championships in just under two years from today.
While that maybe an entertaining questions, the premise behind it is completely irrelevant.
For at least the last several of decades (if not centuries) female endurance athletes have had to prove their worth and ability in a way that was completely and utterly irrelevant.
Do you recall the silly arguments that kept women from competitive long distance running? You know the "substantial" fear that some doctors had about female athlete's ovaries falling out at mile 10 on the marathon course.
Much has changed since those days, and yet unfortunately much remains the same.
To this day many female endurance athletes do not compete on the same level (read distance) as their male competitors.
For instance take female Olympic cycling as a prime example. Did you know that the women's road race is much shorter than the men's road race?
Perhaps the Olympic organizers fear that the men's road course might be too tough for female cyclist should they have to ride the same distance as their male counterparts?
Yet the most recent science suggests that (at least when it comes to endurance sports) female athletes have the advantage over male athletes.
They are stronger and they are tougher than their male counterparts at the long distance races.
If you graph the rate of decline of both the women's and men's fastest marathon times, the only possible conclusion you can reach is that women, in the not too distance future if current trends hold, will soon be faster at the marathon distance than their male counterparts.
At this year's Kona Ironman World Championship Chrissie Wellington "chicked" all but 22 men in the entire field.
We applaud Chrissie for her success and her skills at being a phenomenal endurance athlete.
But what makes endurance sports ultimately so fair and compelling to watch is that the clock does not care about DNA, skin color, number of limbs, ethnic heritage, or even age.
Many of these are all criteria that we add to make the race "fair." for all.
We say to all of the 1800 or so male and female competitor who got beat by Chrissie Wellington at Kona this year that you did not get 'chicked'----you simply got got beat by one of the greatest endurance athletes (male of female) in the short history of the sport of triathlon.
By simply and only pointing to a person's gender as the reason for greater shame at being beaten or greater accomplishment at winning, you are not making that person accomplishments any lessor or greater----all you are doing is continuing decades and centuries of false and irrelevant stereotypes about both male and female athletes.
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