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by s1artibartfast 78 days ago
> I have nothing to say about your observations, though I will continue to wear my "I'm here for the women's race" t-shirt whenever I can.

Yet you would hapilly abolish them and think the world a better place? Im genuinely confused.

Would you wear a "division 2" or "slow bracket" shirt with similar gusto?
2 comments
PaulDavisThe1st 78 days ago
I said that I would only abolish them if we could get to the endpoint overnight. Which clearly is impossible, ergo, I would not happily abolish them at all.

I'd happily wear a "I'm here for the D2a race" shirt in such a system.

Most people's paths as sports participants (not spectators) is that they enter a tiered system and remain there. Only a tiny percentage of people rise through that system to become truly national or internationally competitive.

One of the central problems here is that there are conflicts between what's good for the participants and whats good for fans/spectators. They are not always in conflict, but in several important ways, they truly are. 99.99999% of people who run marathons are not Eliud Kipchoge, and are not interested in a system that is designed around his level of performance and competition. But 90%+ of the people who would pay to watch marathons have little interest in a system that isn't built around talents like his. The same is true of almost all sports - solo or team - but it doesn't show up for 80% of them because there is no market for paid viewing of them. Or rather ... there wasn't until YT became what it is today. "The Finisher", a film about Jasmin Paris, the first woman to finish the infamous Barkley Marathons, has had 1.8M views, something it would never have achieved in "legacy" media.

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kelseyfrog 78 days ago
Why would you name it "division 2"? If you're going to test for SRY as the way to assign participants, then you should name the divisions "SRY-pos" and "SRY-neg". At least that would be correct.
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PaulDavisThe1st 78 days ago
That's the exact opposite of what I'm suggesting up-thread.

Categories would be assigned based on performance criteria for the sport in question. One simplistic approach, loosely modelled on how road cycling works, would be to have categories based on race performances - you enter an "open" category, and after N finishes above a certain level, you are required to move up to "division 4". After N finishes above a certain level in div4, you are required to move up to "division 3". And so on. The idea is that you're racing against your performance peers, regardless of their gender (or age).

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