Girl Power

Why is it that males lead the way in competitive sports?

In snowboarding, if a female gets some big air, you will hear the announcer say: “Wow. You usually only see that kind of air with the men.”

Gretchen Bleiler, the 2006 Olympic silver medallist in the women’s halfpipe said:

“Men and women are built differently, and in the end, men are generally more powerful and technical than women.”

She goes on to contradict herself by saying there are some women who can hit the same tricks as men.

Women are always able to hit the same tricks as men. It just takes women longer to get to that level.

It is men who revolutionize the sport and women eventually follow in those footsteps.

Men have been landing the quad in figure skating for years. Men are required to do the jump. Women are required only to do triples. But when Miki Ando, a Japanese figure skater, landed the quad in international competition the door opened up. In the next 10 years, women doing quads will become commonplace. It would be nice to take these women and transport them back in time to compete in an era where men weren’t yet attempting quads. That way these women would be revolutionizing the sport instead of men.

It would be nice to take professional skateboarders Vanessa Torres and Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins and transport them to compete before the Z-Boys ever tore up the scene back in the 70s. Then it would be two women who revolutionized the sport instead of three guys.

In my experience doing karate, women are timid and afraid to try. They need time to build up their courage. Where as beginner men are almost suicidal – they’ll go at it full-tilt even if they have wrong technique. But when a woman realizes she is fully capable, she becomes equal and sometimes better than her male competitors. I’ve seen it happen more than once.