I know there isn't an easy answer, but you have to admit there's a double standard at play. We're happy to accept that sport is unfair in 99.9% of cases. A short, stocky guy could train every day for a lifetime, develop world-class technique and still be slower in the pool than his lean, 6' 3" neighbour who does a few lengths on the weekend. We wouldn't bat an eyelid.
There are examples all across top level sport of male athletes who have ludicrous biological advantages over the average man and, collectively, we don't care. Michael Phelps, in addition to his height and build, has double jointed ankles and his muscles produce half the lactic acid a normal man's do. Should we not be asking him to take some medication to make his muscles less efficient, or ask him to compete in a different category so he's not taking medals from everyone else? If not, why not? Does unfair advantage only impact performance if chromosomes and gonads are involved?
The lesser-spotted Michael Phelps trope out.
Should we not be asking him to take some medication to make his muscles less efficient, or ask him to compete in a different category
What category would this be, seaworld olympics?!
Look, a sport is the ultimate meritocracy and the point is the win the game/race/event by the defined parameters. So if we take swimming, lean muscle mass and endurance will prosper over outright strength and power. Naturally, certain body types will be better at those individual sports, the sports themselves act as a controlling factor if that makes sense. The fact that a lot of sports do control for size advantages also makes the point mute.
Does unfair advantage only impact performance if chromosomes and gonads are involved?
Again, this doesn't make sense because, if we take Phelps, he still was in the usual parameters for a human being. He wasn't a dolphin. He wasn't six feet tall with nine feet of arms and a mermaid's tail. He had certain physiological traits that other people have, or a combination of which, enabled him to have some advantages in the pool. If he had things that were such an outlier
that directly benefited his ability in the pool say literal flippers, he would have been banned from competition. Other humans could compete with him and get close. Sometimes they couldn't. Same with Usain Bolt. Same with Adam Peatty. They all fall within the normal parameters for human males.
The issue we have unfortunately is male puberty. Testosterone is, to most competitive sports, a cheat code. Like rocket fuel. There is a reason it's the go-to PED in most sports and the ones women take to cheat. The biological issue we have is that through puberty, males are mainlined this wonder drug and it has lasting and permanent effects (usually) on a male's physiology, ligaments, muscles, bones, heart size, VOmax, blood oxygen etc.
The debate is whether these can be reversed or mitigated to enable trans women (those born male and wish to transition to live as female - good luck to them) to lower certain genetic advantages men have over women in certain sports.
Do we need to control for these differences in pistol shooting, darts, snooker, golf, horse riding, dressage, high board diving, curling, bowls, bowling, and chess? In my opinion, no because the parameters of those sports or pastimes are not rooted in physical advantages.
