Where Co-Ed is Not OK

Guess which sport is still being run by a bunch of dinosaurs? Athletics. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) recently decided to drop the women’s world record for a marathon because, hold your breath, it was run in a mixed environment! ‘Mixed’ means a race involving both men and women.

So what’s the problem with a mixed environment? Apparently, having men in the race sets a faster pace compared to an all-women race. Huh? If the pace set by the men is too fast for the women, wouldn’t the women just tire out? On the other hand, if the women are able to run faster because they can keep up, how is that not a fair record?

Even the dinos realized that they couldn’t completely bury the faster time set in a mixed environment. Their solution? Call the time set in a mixed environment the “world best”. Which, of course, would be different (and faster) than the “world record”. Wow! How dumb can you get?

Comments

  1. KumarSeptember 23, 2011 at 12:07 PM

    I don't get your point. Maybe I am also dumb as a dinosaur!

    Did they say 'no' to the women's record because women cannot make it to the record level set by men?

    Or, did they do it because in the mixed mode, women outpace men which hurts the male ego?

    If the first is the problem, like in all sports practically, they can have women's marathon separately. Or have mixed running but separate the rating of women and men based on their timings in their (sex) group. And decide on winning positions and records.

    If the problem is male ego, then nothing can be done! Who can argue with men who annul races (and such other things) if women outpace them? That would only be like arguing with dinosaurs of the carnivore variety!

    By the way, in most Islamic countries women are forbidden in many sports because their dress code would be violated and make them immodest. As far as religions go (I mean all the religions with more or less no exception) male ego "has" God's own sanction; so we better not speak anything any further on religion coming into sports!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Viswanathan K.September 23, 2011 at 3:11 PM

    I didn't mean either of the options you mention. What they said was that in a mixed race, women run faster than they would run in a women-only race. However, even in such a mixed race, women run slower than men. So the issue isn't male ego.

    ReplyDelete

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