Gender equality at the Olympics

[KristyJ]

It’s one thing to make balancing gender representation an important goal. I agree. It is an important goal!
It is entirely a different thing to make cuts to essentially different sports (even under the same governing body) without regards to the knock-on effects of that choice simply in the name of a numbers game. The sports should be balanced reasonably for the sport itself first. If that means that other changes need to be made, find some that aren’t harmful to a given sport!

I feel like the suggestion I find most intriguing in this thread is the idea of adding an event or two to WAG. Who is to say that women’s parallel bars or some form of pommel horse couldn’t be interesting? We’ve seen athletes do flairs on beam, and parallel bars used to be competed in WAG (look at Johanna Qantz still competing it in her 90s!)

And then if RG stays in the Olympics (a decision that should be based on the merits of the sport IMO instead of just gender), maybe allow men’s RG to grow as a discipline. It could also be interesting.

 

[MaryClare]

Sync swimming in Russia is made up entirely of ex RG who hurt a hip/knee/shoulder/back from being over stretched as children. If you’ve trained in Russian RG you can already hold your breath forever since it’s the only way to make stretching less painful.

But isn’t as political as RG, probably because it has a wider reach in terms of participating countries. It’s really only the anglosphere that doesn’t do it. Plus there is computer scoring.

Figure skating is crazy. But. A. All the leading countries in it are fucking crazy and B. It’s so popular (and crucially, it’s popular in the US) that makes it untouchable.

 

[MaryClare]

Say it after me. There is not going to be a 5th apparatus added in women’s artistic. It’s a fun conversation to have, but it’s utter fantasy.

 

[KristyJ]

Oh probably. But it’s sure fun to think about!

Honestly if it were to come about, the more likely means would be via a grassroots level. There are some places where in, say, high school competition in the US, teens have crossed gender lines in competition at lower levels.

 

[J175]

(And lets talk about venues. BMX, for example, is asinine at the summer games. An entire custom stadium for 2-4 days of competition? No. Stop that shit.)

The venues aren’t talked about enough. People talk about how the games have become too big, but the number of athletes has barely changed since the 90s - hence why the established sports have had to accept reduced quotas. But new sports keep being added, and several of them - BMX, Skateboarding, Surfing, Climbing, Golf - require specialist venues which many hosts will have no option but to build from scratch. I think another big driver of costs is the standard expected of everything now, a lot of venues and accommodation used in the past probably wouldn’t pass muster with the IOC today.

 

[JDB]

The football and water polo issues look fairly easy to solve - I don’t know why football is still like that, the men’s competition is irrelevant

This is why I mentioned governing bodies not doing a good job promoting women’s participation. The IOC has been pushing gender equality and the governing bodies are dragging their feet.

As for wrestling which you mentioned, UWW ideally could achieve parity if wrestling had more weight classes. But the IOC won’t allocate more. And IMO wrestling doesn’t deserve more yet.

 

[irichluck21]

I think another big driver of costs is the standard expected of everything now, a lot of venues and accommodation used in the past probably wouldn’t pass muster with the IOC today.

Not necessarily. The IOC has been pushing for “green Olympics” so not to create new buildings that end up sitting there.

Paris and Los Angeles are using majority of existing venues. Other sports like surfing, open water swim, beach volleyball are using temporary venues since they are outdoors.
Paris main venues

Los Angeles

Only venue that is being constructed for LA is Canoe Slalom at Sepulveda Dam. But there are plans for use following the Olympics as the area near the Dam is a large recreational area already.

 

[makam]

At least they finally allowed Japan to use an already existing velodrome instead of having to build a new one. But there is another hyper-specialized arena (though it at least gets used for more than 2 medal ceremonies) that too many countries don’t need. Places like LA and London have the buildings to repurpose (and since economic realities have stopped countries from trying to emulate Brazil) but more specialized sports that require fancy venues is going to basically limit the Olympics to LA, London, Paris, and Beijing in the future (though surfing clearly would be held elsewhere for all but LA). Trying to youth-up the Olympics means chasing sports that have unique/sole purpose venues and that is a bad idea.

 

[MaryClare]

Yeah that’s a good point. Why are they chasing the youth market? The Olympics has never appealed to that demographic

 

[JaJa]

I feel like the suggestion I find most intriguing in this thread is the idea of adding an event or two to WAG.

How feasible is this though? Gender equality is a fine goal. But there has to be a great more thought given to how to do that in a way that makes sense and does not become some sort of mindless numbers game which can end up wrecking the most popular Olympic sport.

 

[MaryClare]

I think there can sometimes be a perception bias from US gym fans because in the US, the popularity gap between WAG and MAG is absolutely enormous. But that isn’t the case across the world. In Russia and GB, they are roughly the same and in Japan, MAG is more popular

 

[arabiandoublefront]

Well, who’s going to watch in the future, I guess. I liked the Olympics when I was a kid because it seemed bigger than any else. It had nothing to do with trendy sports, though, which is probably the point.

 

[MaryClare]

Because it’s something that people become more interested in as they get older. Always has been

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

I think any of us posting on here are by definition unrepresentative when it comes to this kind of thing.

 

[KristyJ]

I literally said above that merely chasing a numbers game is stupid. But if people want to think about numbers that would be a more interesting way to do it that could potentially enrich the sport and would be based in some history.

 

[Denn]

What about keeping rhythmic as an individual event but removing the team event?

That would keep the WAG numbers high.

Frankly, WAG can afford to lose some AAers and both MAG and WAG can afford to lose two teams.

 

[MaryClare]

Then the FIG are a medal short.

I repeat, if you increase WAG numbers, you make it harder to win a medal in WAG than in MAG. From a sporting perspective that’s genuinely unequal. Different number of participants is not

 

[makam]

Is “chance of winning a medal” something they really prioritize? We get what you are saying, 100 people with 6 medals is theoretically better odds than 100 people with 4 medals (or 130 people with 4 medals), but realistically, most of those people don’t have a chance and they know it. They are just there for the experience and maybe it is worth it to increase the numbers who get the experience even if it decreases the odds of getting a medal. In RG, there are what, 4 medal contenders, maybe 5, in any competition? So why do the others even show up?

In swimming, running, jumping, everyone knows their numbers and how they stack up. Sure, maybe they’ll have their best day while a Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps has their worst day, but unless they were already looking like a silver medal winner, that isn’t going to push them from last to first. The odds might look fair on paper (I have a 3/8 chance of getting a medal in freestyle today) but we all know that those numbers fall apart when applied to real people (but only if Katie Ledecky quits mid race, otherwise it really is a 2/8 chance).

 

[MaryClare]

It’s about mathematical probability. The number of genuine medal contenders is irrelevant. Having it statistically less likely to medal in WAG than in MAG is not a good look.

Across the 3 disciplines, there is an equal number of male and female participants. This is a very good look.

In total there are 9 events for women and 9 for men. It’s just that the women’s medals are split across 3 disciplines and the men’s across 2.

 

[makam]

How about…synchronized uneven bars and team floor exercise (or would that just be cheerleading?)? Parallel balance beams where you have to jump artistically to the other one for half tge routine!