Women Faster than Men in 2156?

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http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/09/30/science.sport.women.reut/index.html

Study: Women may beat men in sprint by 2156
Thursday, September 30, 2004 Posted: 11:15 AM EDT (1515 GMT)

LONDON, England (Reuters) – Women could be faster 100-meter sprinters than men by the 2156 Olympics, according to a study on Wednesday.

By the middle of the next century women may be leaving men in the dust and could, for the first time, beat them in the 100 meters.

If projections by scientists at Oxford University in England are correct, women will close the gender gap by clocking 8.079 seconds in the 100 meters, ahead of the best male time of 8.098 seconds. The current world record stands at 9.78 seconds.

“If current trends continue, the women will run faster than the men at the 2156 Olympics,” said Andrew Tatem, an epidemiologist at the university.

“There is a strong trend at the moment of both men and women improving their 100-meter times at the Olympics but women are increasing at a faster rate …,” he told Reuters.

American sprinter Justin Gatlin won the men’s 100 meters in Athens this year with a time of 9.85 and Yuliya Nesterenko of Belarus took the women’s gold in 10.93.

Winning times in the sprint for both sexes have increased since the 1900 Olympics, due to improved ability and better diet, fitness and coaching.

Tatem and his colleagues plotted the winning times of the men’s and women’s Olympic finals for the sprint over the past 100 years. Their research showed no sign that either male or female athletes have reached a plateau.

By extending current trends to the 2008 Olympics, they estimate women could win the 100 meters in 10.57 and the men in 9.73. Their calculations, which are published in the science journal Nature, show clear linear trends up to 2252.

“The lines (representing the best male and female times) cross just before the 2156 Olympics,” Tatem said.

But he added that the analysis did not include confounding influences such as timing accuracy, environmental variations, national boycotts or the use of legal or banned stimulants.

How much illegal substances have influenced men’s or women’s timing is unknown. According to some commentators, drug use can explain why women’s times were improving faster than men’s, particularly since they slowed after the introduction of drug testing, according to Tatem and his colleagues.

But they found no evidence to support that.

One explanation for the closing speed gap is that women have not been competing in the 100 meters as long as men and until now only a minority of the female population has been given an opportunity to compete.

“Sports, biological and medical sciences should enable athletes to continue to improve on Olympic and world records, by fair means or foul,” Tatum said in the Nature report.

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My opinion about that research:

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Based on the trend in the women’s 100 from 1988 to 2004, we should expect the winning time to be 15 sec by 2156. How do these cretins get into print??

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They like research money.

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that article is so unrealistic its unbeleivable. look at the world records of both men and women then compare. about Gatlins time of 9.85, this is .07 away from WR, whereas womens winning time in the olympics is 0.44 away from WR. so i dont really see how any trend is improving. i see the men are infact way more close to breaking the world record in the 100m than women. and to not be any racist, but beating men is just a joke…

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sexist, not racist

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hilarious pic AUT_71. and tha article is utter garbage. a faster woman some day? maybe. based on that research? uh…no. they must have been really bored and done some funky math.

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We know how much they like research money- the question is: Why would anyone give it to them? 100 years of Olympic results for men and women??? That would mean starting from 1904. The women didn’t start running the 100 until 1928.
Next time you see a new “study”, think of this one before you swallow it hook, line, and sinker.

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Charlie, I didn’t. I just thought it was relevant here to discuss.

later.

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Articles that do appear on the news sites, or synopses, if you will, are just hacked together versions of the real scientifc papers that are released once every blue moon from the researchers themselves. The newswriters just take the main points, put them together into a “fascinating”, yet sometimes unfairly rigged notion that suits the website that it appears on, instead of the original intent of the scientist. No doubt that seeing a linear trend in the decrease of times since the turn of the last century is quite good, even though Charlie points out that comparable times can be placed back to 1928, I believe that this is the point being made by the scientists. But what they left, whether it is unintentional or not, is the sense that the potential for lower times is open-ended, which I’m certain is not necessarily true.

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I wasn’t attacking you for posting this at all. Rather, I was attacking the study, which falls down on every front.

1: It ignores the obvious physical differences between men and women.
2: Womens sprint times have been rising, not falling, for 16 years.
3: The trend line for women is skewed because men recieved scholarships/financial rewards for decades before women, and were in the Olympics 32 years sooner. (In other words, the women who won in the early part of the century performed at levels vastly below that which could be reasonably be expected based on physical differences alone)

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The “research” was even presented in various Cable Channels in Europe last evening as it was distributed by Reuters!
The TV people even made up more “arguments”: Women can clean windows faster and are more swift doing housework, so if they gain the necessasry strenght levels they will of course run faster - to me it’s just damn funny!

It’s only that they get money for sh.t like that. I’ll have do do some research and make a little $, too. How about: acording to the development of children and their bodygrowth taken over the last 100 years and considering the fact that 12 year olds get bigger and bigger by 2209 children at the age of 12 will be taller than grown-ups?

I got one that might fit even better:

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I was performing at a National Scholastic Sports Foundation event today, and a vendor had a few books on the table. I opened one, wish I bothered to remember the title, but it was on throws, and in discussing a not-very-well described training method, the author says(approximate quote)“the disadvantage of this system is that the higher level the athlete reaches, the slower increases come”.

Um, like every other training method?

But wait: based upon the difference in percent of improvement per year between new weight trainers and elite lifters, we can surmise that the new guys are better trainers. Because they get results faster. And if they keep at it, will be benching 3000 lbs. by 2050.

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women faster than men? LOL

This is the most retarted thing I’ve ever heard off. Yes women will get faster as will men in the long run because in 50 years from now there will be newer ways to cheat, better nutrition, genetics will evolve and there always a possiblity of a mutant. The gap will close to some degree but remember at what age Flo-Jo died and what she was willing to give up for it; in terms of that, I don’t see a women anywhere near her record for another 24 years at least and then after for a women even to get to 9.78 could take another 72 years while men will being running well under that!

Just read the “East German Textbook For Athletics” which will point out to you why due to anthropometrical differences, women will probably never win the 100m for the remainder of human society but they may well be right around the corner in terms of winning a marathon!

I see universities waste a lot of money on research instead of actually getting there athletes what they need in terms of training facilities and coaches like athletics/sport Canada or whatever they call themselves.

In fact I was able to access records of one of the top university’s which spent a quarter of a million dollars to do research and to buy meaningless things like a second hockey rink, new treadmills, and giving social athletic clubs ridiculous amounts of money for intramurals; instead, these morons should have built a better track, new weightroom with at least one actual olympic platform (not the crap they have now) and hire a coach/NSCA person who can actually teach them how to properly lift and get better results. The coaches at this major university teach there olympic lifts to football and track athletes by bouncing the bar off their hips and do a reverse curl (LOL). They get this kind of funding every year so that they can screw it up, and then they wonder why their football team always finishes last every year in the standings and why nobody as ever come out of there track program with any real success.

ITS BAD ENOUGH THAT STUPID PEOPLE DO STUPID THINGS TO THEMSELVES BUT WHEN THEY DO IT TO OTHER PEOPLE IT JUST PISSES ME OFF. LOOK AT THE UNIVERSITIES IN THE STATES PRIMARILY NEBRASKA, HERE’S A UNIVERSITY THAT ACTUALLY LOOKS AFTER ITS ATHLETES AND EVERBODY ELSE AS WELL. WHEN IT COMES TO CANADA WE JUST HAVE TO MANY MORONS OR UNEDUCATED PEOPLE UP HERE SUPPOSED TO BE OUR EDUCATORS LEADING US DOWN A PATH OF HIGHER LEARNING INSTEAD WERE LEAD TO A PAC OF WOLVES. THIS SAME UNIVERSITY COULD HAVE HIRED A VARDANIAN TO TEACH THE OLY LIFTS PROPERLY OR SOMEBODY FROM THE NSCA/NEBRASKA TO BUILD THERE WEIGHTROOM FOR THEM BUT INSTEAD THEY DECIDE TO BLOW THERE MONEY ON WASTED RESEARCH ON WHY OLYMPIC LIFTING AND OR WEIGHTLIFTING LEADS TO BETTER ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE! AHH DUH I COULD HAVE TOLD YOU THAT. :mad:

I wish we could put all these stupid people on a one island and… :eek:

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I feel if women are to come close to mens times it may be in the longer distances - e.g. Paula Radcliffe in the marathon

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Can I just ask why an epidemiologist was studying this? Is he proposing that female athletes are an infectious disease?

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Cause sometimes bullshit carries germs

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This has to be true because a year ago I was faster than one of my female athletes, and now at 15 years old she is faster than I am. If she continues at this rate of development, in ten years she will be running the 100m in less than one second.

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this is great news. Let me know as soon as she gets under 9 and I’ll be her agent!

PS don’t forget to call the English scientists to help you project the date for this milestone so we can start borrowing money against our future “earnings”.

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I hope you can still kick her ass in Ultimate Fighting though!