Athletics 2019 Discussion Thread

heywoodu · May 2, 2019

22 hours ago, Olympian1010 said:

Sad day for human rights. I blame the European Athletics Federations because their upset that their athletes just don’t have equal talent. If she was a white runner from Europe or the North American this rule wouldn’t have been enforced again. This makes me so sad.

Like those that were forced to undergo extremely humiliating 'tests' to make sure they were women, in a time where racism was a lot more present than it is now? Come on, just accept that this is an extremely complicated case, on both sides, and there really isn't one single 'right' decision. It's sad for Semenya, it's not sad for human rights, or women's sports. There was no way any decision could be made to make everyone remotely happy.

heywoodu · May 2, 2019

17 hours ago, JoshMartini007 said:

We could follow the Paralympics lead and create a class system for different levels of testosterone (ignoring that there's more than testosterone levels that dictates advantage in sports)

Then, much like the Paralympics, you end up with a gazillion events with two or three athletes kinda fighting against each other and the rest being 20 laps down in a 10 lap race. Look at Paralympic skiing: it's cool to have so many events in one sense, but half of them are decided by insane margins because only a tiny number of people fall in that category and an even tinier amount of those people are interested in that sport and again an even tinier amount of those people want to focus on that event.

heywoodu · May 2, 2019

Something that's not clear to me yet: will Semenya get an official athletics ban, like dopers? Or can she not compete anymore specifically in 400, 800 and 1500 meters? And from when on? Because she's on tomorrow's Diamond League 800m start list in Doha.

Also: really curious to see if she's going to attack the 200m now

dcro · May 2, 2019

Yeah... That Paralympic thing is not happening. Your laymen audience will just run away from the Olympics that have more than two genders.

Dunadan · May 2, 2019

19 hours ago, Dragon said:

I can give you the names of British, American, Italian, Dutch, Indian, Romanian, Austrian, Russia, Spanish athletes whose careers were ended before they achieved anything near what Semenya has won.

Who are they? When/why/how were they careers cut short?

phelps · May 2, 2019

1 hour ago, heywoodu said:

Something that's not clear to me yet: will Semenya get an official athletics ban, like dopers? Or can she not compete anymore specifically in 400, 800 and 1500 meters? And from when on? Because she's on tomorrow's Diamond League 800m start list in Doha.

Also: really curious to see if she's going to attack the 200m now

first, she's still eligible for her "regular" races for a while (she's on the startlist in tomorrow's Doha DL meet, for instance), because she has 30 days (from yesterday) to appeal CAS' decision in a Swiss Civil Court...and until this procedure is over (in both ways, should she appeal or not), nothing's gonna change...

then, if she doesn't appeal CAS' decision, she's still able to compete over her "regular" races if she takes the hormones regulators, which should lower her testosterone rate down to a "normal woman's level" (and she has to do it regularly for the 6 months preceding every race between 400m and 1500m/mile she wants to enter)...

meanwhile, if she doesn't want to undergo that therapy (whose long terms effect are still controversial...some studies suggest that could lead to cancer if it's used for a very long period, but those same studies are not accepted by the entire medical community since thay haven't been conducted for a significant period yet, therefore it's too early to make any sort of "definitive statement" on the argument), she can still enter the other events of the athletics program...

in any case, there's no ban (as a convicted doper) at all for her...

she's only considered a sick woman, who need to be treated for her "disease"...

p.s. it looks that she rather go up to the longer distances...I read just yesterday that last (South African) summer she had her first race over 5000m...and without a proper training for that distance, she beat the reigning South African Champion by more than 100m (the full final straight), even if the race was quite slow in overall terms...