Official Off Topic Discussion Thread #1

[Ogertron3000]

here is the moment in all its glory, forgot to add it to my previous post. The canadian traithlete.
I dont know why but i laughed so much when i saw it live, even my 8 year old kid said i was childish.

 

[Caperguy99]

This isnt actually true, i dont know why so many are getting worked up over something false.
The algerian boxer is biologically a woman. she isnt trans and was never a man, she has all female reproductive parts from birth, apparently there is some chromosome change that makes her produce a lot more testosterone than a normal female which does give her an unfair but natural advantage. I dont know if its fair or not , is it the same as someone very tall having an advantage in basketball or long jump?

I feel so badly for that woman. She’s born, no indication physically that she is anything but a little girl. Raised as a girl, with all of the normal experiences and expectations of a girl and then a woman in Algeria. Gets into boxing and has a ton of professional success at the international level. Then, all of the sudden, some testing organization with a sketchy reputation comes out with some test that says you have a chromosomal imbalance that leads to increased testosterone production - though not to a degree that the IOC would say excludes you from competition.

So you go to the Olympics, which you’ve been training for for almost your entire life.

Then, after winning, you turn into an international controversy and spectacle - with millions of people discussing your looks, your decision to go into boxing at all, calling you a “man”, and some saying she should be killed - which, if people in her home country of Algeria actually believe her to be a trans person, could potentially be possible.

No wonder she was bawling after her last fight.

 

[esoxlucius]

feel so badly for that woman.

If it is all above board, and her hormone imbalance is just a freak thing which she can't control, then yes it is extremely unfortunate for her.

Even if the situation doesn't give the IOC reason to do anything about it, the fact still remains that her testosterone levels are way higher than her competitors, who would quite rightly argue that the playing field is no longer level.

If I'd trained for years for the Olympics and came across an opponent who had an edge, an edge which surpassed just better preparation, even though it was no fault of their own, I'd feel pretty *****y about it.

Do you put her in with the men? Absolutely not, that would be ridiculous. Do you leave her in with the women only to see her wipe the floor with everyone? That doesn't seem right either. So, do you put her in with the "them", "those", "its". That option currently doesn't exist, though watch this space!

Yes, she's in quite an unfortunate predicament for sure. The only answer, as I can see it, is to address the hormone imbalance situation to level things up.

 

[Caperguy99]

If I'd trained for years for the Olympics and came across an opponent who had an edge, an edge which surpassed just better preparation, even though it was no fault of their own, I'd feel pretty *****y about it.

Absolutely - and I have no idea what the answer is. In a way, it shows how far we’ve come scientifically that we’re even able to split these sorts of hairs - if she came about as a competitor before chromosomal testing and genetic assessments were even possible, she’d simply be a dominant female competitor, full stop. Although to be honest, she hasn’t been as massively dominant as to indicate that it’s a gigantic advantage - she has lost matches in the past, and her record has been average - to - decent. It’s not like she’s KO’d everyone she’s ever fought.

I imagine the sporting agencies are grappling with all sorts of these questions. If a natural hormonal imbalance makes for an uneven playing field, what about other unusual natural occurrences? Michael Phelps has a mutated genetic marker that lets him produce significantly less lactic acid than the average competitive swimmer - by like 50% - which would significantly increase his ability in endurance sports. Is this unfair? Or sometimes are these things what “naturally” allow some people to rise above the competition?

In my own view, I think there’s a difference between sticking a needle in your leg to get a big test boost and simply showing up with the body you were born with. But how we draw those lines, I can’t say.

 

[esoxlucius]

In my own view, I think there’s a difference between sticking a needle in your leg to get a big test boost and simply showing up with the body you were born with. But how we draw those lines, I can’t say.

Indeed. There's plenty of past incidents through the decades of performance enhancing drug scandals, and my love, cycling, has had perhaps the most notorious in history thanks to Lance Armstrong.

But actively doping to give you the edge by putting needles in you is totally different to having a natural edge through your body's own natural function. It's a good edge to have from a performance perspective for the actual competitor, and not their fault at all, though I suppose it could be a real headache for sporting governing bodies who want a level playing field in the name of fairness.

Incidentally, there is a basic test, usually done best in the controlled environment of a sports lab, called the VO2 max test. It measures your bodies natural ability to process oxygen under the duress of extreme activity. Obviously this is an extremely critical test for any athlete if they're going to succeed in their sport.

Some people have naturally good numbers, others naturally don't. The "others" will never become elite athletes, it's as black and white as that. All the cycling books I've ever read all have the top cyclists with extraordinary VO2 max numbers, off the scale compared to your average Joe, and I suspect track athletes and swimmers etc etc are the same.

It's going to be up to the governing bodies to decide which naturally occuring "perks" are passable, which ones aren't passable, and of course if that's not hard enough, all the time watching out for unscrupulous athletes who stick needles in themselves too. Yikes!

 

[Ulu]

The art of war seems well and alive at the Olympics, while the art of friendly competition seems to be lost in the process of running humanity through a sieve, to determine who is the best at something.

We seemingly train for war, bringing such activities to the world of competition sports.

Chasing people down, throwing spears, rowing a long boat, fencing, shooting, climbing, throwing big rocks, jumping over walls… It all started with war.

The problem of course is that real war has no rules. It’s life or death and you live or die.

My solution to boxing is that not only do you sort the competitors by age height and weight, but by their ability to punch.

You initiate competition by having everybody punch a machine that measures their effort. The strongest punch in every class gets an award, but if you are over the official numbers, you have to move up to the next class to compete.

This means you’ll have lots of weak men comparing themselves in competition to strong women, but there’s probably nothing wrong with that in itself. We just have to be comparing people of reasonably equal physical abilities.

Then you just forget about those hormonal rules and if somebody is too strong you bump them up to the next class. Not hard enough? They can’t compete at all, if they can’t hit minimum standard for class.

Now the best laid plans of mice and men always have a flaw, and this will too. Personally I was never fond of things like boxing, but I did it myself when necessary.

Most of you fellas don’t know that my father’s profession required us to move a lot, and I went to 14 different schools.

There was always somebody that wanted to fight when a new kid showed up at school.

 

[jjohnwm]

The problem with your proposed system, Ulu , is that there will be competitors working to beat and cheat the system starting about 10 seconds after it is instituted...as is always the case. I can see a bunch of boxers all pulling their punches, in an effort to be placed into a category which will allow them to mop up the floor with their opponents, as opposed to the next higher category where they really belong but where they will be fighting others who are more their equals.

The people whose natural genetic gifts place them at the top of the heap in their chosen sports, or perhaps in life in general, are always going to be accused by their opponents and detractors of being cheaters in some form. It's human nature, there is no avoiding it. But let's take as an example a high-testosterone woman who has risen to the top of her chosen sport; she has always been aware that she was different to some extent. She has likely always been faster or stronger or whatever than her female cohorts; she has taken advantage of her gifts (and rightfully so!) to attain the pinnacle. Upon doing so, there will inevitably be an emotional reaction, whether it be tears, elation, whatever. Nothing wrong with that, perfectly understandable. I can't honestly say I feel sorry for such a person, and the fact that the spotlight is focused on her should not be a surprise to her or anyone else.

If you don't want to be pointed at and questioned and accused of chicanery...then don't climb to the top of the heap and strive to be labelled as the best in the world, because if you do...that's what will happen.

The key words above were "natural genetic gifts". Today, there are any number of athletes who are resorting to un-natural artificial gifts to give them an edge. Steroids or other performance-enhancing drugs are an old idea; how much longer will it be before we start seeing genetic modifications being done on human beings? We can make fish that glow in the dark; how far is that from making people who run inhumanly fast or who are as strong proportionally as ants? Far-fetched? Yes...but how about making people who process oxygen at impossible levels or produce no lactic acid or whatever? Never say never.

How will the world react to this? How should it react? The days of settling debates about which classification an athlete should fall under by simply asking them to drop their drawers for a quick check are long gone. It's not just guys or girls now; we are definitely on the brink of humans vs X-men.

Back when I was a kid, the Iron Wall still stood strong, and the Soviet Union...the "Evil Empire"...was often accused of strong-arming their Olympic hopefuls using all sorts of extreme measures. Everybody "knew" that competitors' families were held hostage to coerce the best from the athletes themselves. Everybody "knew" that if a Soviet athlete failed to win...there were dire penalties. Certainly, a huge percentage of their athletes were in the military, and everybody "knew" that these people would wind up in a gulag or worse if they didn't bring home a medal.

That kind of common wisdom was likely hugely exaggerated...but I'm sure it had a large kernel of truth at its center. Today...can anybody observe Putin and still doubt that he would do similar or worse things to win?

 

[Caperguy99]

The problem with your proposed system, Ulu , is that there will be competitors working to beat and cheat the system starting about 10 seconds after it is instituted...

And even then, you’d have people disagreeing over whether that’s cheating or not. In combat sports, for example, “sucking weight” in order to make weight for a particular weight class is super common. So common, in fact, that it’s essentially seen as a regular part of training for those sports. You even see it in the UFC and so on.

Is that cheating because those people wouldn’t “naturally” be walking around at that weight? Almost nobody in those sports would agree, but maybe that’s just because it’s so common?

I guess we’ll never have consensus

 

[jjohnwm]

And even then, you’d have people disagreeing over whether that’s cheating or not. In combat sports, for example, “sucking weight” in order to make weight for a particular weight class is super common. So common, in fact, that it’s essentially seen as a regular part of training for those sports. You even see it in the UFC and so on.

Is that cheating because those people wouldn’t “naturally” be walking around at that weight? Almost nobody in those sports would agree, but maybe that’s just because it’s so common?

I guess we’ll never have consensus.

Lol, I had to google that term. You're right, that's probably the first and oldest method of flexing the rules, familiar to everyone. Is it cheating? It's definitely the first step in that direction, but as you say...it's so common, and there's nothing specifically forbidding it, so...?

It's just another reason why I don't like competitive sports...and most people don't feel that sports can exist without competition. You see parents consoling their fat and out-of-shape kids that they don't need the medal or the ribbon or the trophy or whatever; their participation is reward enough in itself. That should be true...but then those same kids see and hear and read every day about the extremes to which athletes go because winning is everything...

 

[Ulu]

I can see a bunch of boxers all pulling their punches,

Maybe not.

You can have minimum standards based on last years games.

If you punch below the min for your age, height & weight you don’t qualify to compete. At all.

If you punch over the max they move you up.

The one who hits the hardest in any class automatically gets a class medal. Before fighting anyone.

But if they beat the class record/standard they must move up to keep the medal. If they don’t move up, they don’t fight anyone, and they forfeit the medal they just won.

Winning fights earns medals as usual.