
What If Men and Women Skied Against Each Other in the Olympics? - hw
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-if-men-and-women-skied-against-each-other-in-the-olympics/
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toss1
It's a nice idea, but he's using data that is waaaay too abstracted from
anything he'd need for comparison.

For starters, he did mention that at that level, the courses are set
differently and/or on different trails, so the speed numbers are meaningless,
even in aggregate. (if the data are meaningless, don't do the analysis)

Even tho the aggregate speeds may be similar in Slalom and Giant Slalom, it
doesn't remotely reveal relevant data.

At the lower levels, women and men do compete on the same course, women skiing
first, so the course is in better shape. Their times are consistently slower
than the men who run the same course later when it is more chewed up.

Similarly, when women racers occasionally ski as forerunners on the same
course, although they're skiing as a course & systems check and not supposed
to go flat-out, so might not squeeze out the last few tenths of a second, it's
still the same results.

If it were down to only skills, mental toughness, preparation, I'd expect the
women to ski as fast, but I'm pretty sure that there are some biomechanical
factors in ski racing that will still be critical, e.g., muscle/bone leverage
and similar factors that keep women's weightlifting below the men's results.

A lot of it is strength and flexibility, as you have to hold your edge in the
ice (most race-courses are deliberately iced so they don't get so chewed up)
against some serious forces and vibrations/chatter/bumps. Oversimplifying a
bit, more strength allows you to hold the edge in better contact with the ice
and generate higher turning forces, while simultaneously maintaining a supple
feel for the surface and how your ski is working.

Source: Former USST alpine racer,(mostly DH, also SL/GS/SG).

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akkat
Why do men and women play separately? My guess is because men would almost
always win against women. But in marathons Nigerians have a statistical
advantage, should marathons be separated into Nigerians and not Nigerians? In
most winter sports athletes from colder climates do better, should winter
sports be separated based on the climate of the athletes's home country?
People from Russia do better at chess... I assume most people would say that
the people in my examples shouldn't be separated. So why should men and women
be separated?

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GhostVII
Men and women are very different physically, men are almost always going to be
significantly stronger. We do not have the same amount of difference between
people from different countries. The average man is much stronger than the
average women, but the average person from Nigeria is probably not much faster
at marathons than the average person from Canada.

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fermuch
Does this argument still apply on Olympics? They are nothing like average
people, so I'd guess both genders push the body to the limit.

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paulddraper
Yes, but the difference is huge.

Consider the 100m dash.

In 2016 Olympics, in the final heat, the slowest man ran 4% faster than the
women's _world record_ (which has remained unbroken for 30 years).

Innate differences between the sexes are enormous, even at elite levels.

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kmbriedis
As men courses, especially in SL and GS, often tend to be more complicated, I
don't see any value from these analysis. Just my 2 cents, but a better way to
prove a point would be to compare results in lower (some national) level races
of athletes of similar rank, where they compete in same course (even then
women usually start first, but in good weather conditions the quality of track
remains the same)

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ptx
Is this style of diagram in common use? The ones in the second half of the
article, I mean, showing course length as a function of average speed...? I
can't make any sense of it.

Isn't usually the purpose of drawing lines between the data points to let you
infer the approximate value of the function inbetween the data points? But
here the lines go backwards, giving conflicting values of the function, so how
do you read it?

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jamessb
It's a connected scatterplot. There's quite common in certain contexts (e.g.
the Phillips curve in Economics).

The lines indicate the joined points represent successive measurements.

There's a nice paper describing the history and evaluating their effectiveness
[1]

[1]: [https://eagereyes.org/papers/the-connected-scatterplot-
for-p...](https://eagereyes.org/papers/the-connected-scatterplot-for-
presenting-paired-time-series)

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chopin
Why would that need an official competition? To find out whether women can
race competitive a fun race would suffice, I think. It should be easy to find
sponsors for that, media attention would be high.

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rurban
Women regularly start before the race as "Vorläufer", even Lindsay did a
couple of times already. Those times are known to her. She knows that she has
no chance.

But there are nice athletic sports where woman do compete in the same team
with men in lower leagues. Table tennis e.g.

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js2
I've been watching a lot of curling. The mixed doubles was great. This is a
sport where I don't understand why there are separate mens and womens teams.
How does size/strength/speed confer an advantage in curling?

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maxerickson
Being able to sweep harder is an advantage.

There is probably an upper limit to the force that is beneficial though.

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js2
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks!

