¡ARRIBA PERÚ! 🏆🇵🇪
Ignacio Buse defeats Paul 7-6 4-6 6-3 to become the second Peruvian to win an ATP title on European clay in the Open Era after Pablo Arraya in Bordeaux 1983!
#bitpandahamburgopen
The 19-year drought is over 🇵🇪
Ignacio Buse becomes the first Peruvian finalist on the ATP Tour since Luis Horna at 2007 Vina del Mar - when Buse was aged just 2!
#bitpandahamburgopen
A few crazy things about this race and the climate at the time.
-Melissa Bishop would have been a legend without the DSD athletes. Olympic Gold, World Champ, and a WC silver.
-You'd talk to a lot of elite mid-distance women behind the scenes for years and they'd be pissed off, but afraid to get reamed in the media for doing so. Or just realizing that nothing would change.
-Canada's head coach who was told after Bishop finished 4th at the Olympics by a lawyer for the Canadian Olympic committee "‘You say one thing about this, I’m going to make sure you’re banned for life in all sports.’”
-Lyndsey Sharp did speak up and got torn apart in the media, so the fear was real.
It was just a wild time. And many women lost a lot of money and glory because of it.
A short video on the complex route taken to this week’s International Olympic Committee verdict. With a closing comment on the women who, due to abject policy at past Games, have missed out on their golden moment. Many thanks to @OscarFrost00 for editing https://t.co/CH1NoGN15T
The IOC just announced their policy on DSD and trans athletes in the female category. Let's skip the outrage and go with the scientific facts:
The modern debate started almost 20 years ago with the rise of DSD athletes who were winning world/Olympics (See: Semenya and others).
It came to a head when DSD athletes swept the podium.
The had the single biggest performance boost we can get, androgenization. Something that none of their competitors could ever have.
So debates commenced...
It's important to put in context how big a boost males get from simply being males. It's a larger boost in performance than if you were Lance Armstrong or Barry Bonds and hopped up on all the performance enhancing drugs known to man.
That's how large it is. It's why from 100 meters to races hundreds of miles long, the performance differential is generally 10-15%. Even larger in some strength events.
Every male gets this boost. It doesn't men all men beat all women, of course.
There's significant overlap in performance. My wife is going to better than 99% of men in distance running.
But...that boost gives each male a 10+% jump in performance that no female ever gets. We can see it in the athletic data and the progressions of men and women at puberty.
So...governing bodies and experts debated what to do about it. Women were losing millions of dollars in total to folks who had a male androgenization advantage.
We went from doing nothing, not much of a real policy to eventually instituting testosterone rules.
THe thinking was, testosterone can be a surrogate marker. It also gave DSD athletes a venue to still compete in the male category. They could lower their T to typical female levels, and still race.
There were a few problems with this. First, it obviously only took into account CURRENT T levels. A large part of the boost comes from androgens through a lifetime.
Second, this was challenged in court by DSD athletes. It was a long process that led to some strange policies along the way (for instance, rules only applied to certain event groups). It was tricky to regulate and be fair, and telling someone they had to have a medical intervention to compete came with ethical issues.
So that was eventually scrapped. I'm simplifying and summarizing years long backs and forth, obviously.
Track and field moved to the policy the IOC just adopted a year ago. Using the SRY test as a screener.
Why? It was simpler, straightforward and applied to all females, so their wasn't a separate DSD and trans policy.
It also put the dividing line for segregating sports by sex instead of a surrogate marker.
It's a one time screener, and then with specific follow up if potential DSD.
There's an exception for CAIS athletes because androgenization has little to no effect on them. So they do not have an advantage.
So what? I've seen this policy framed as immoral, fascist, and even nazism...which is crazy...
But the point is...it's a result of 20 years of debate, research, and trying to figure out a solution to a tricky problem.
There's a lot of people who don't know or are ignorant to the decades this has been going on.
Why is it important to separate sports based on sex?
Because it's the biggest performance boost we could get. If we didn't, there would be zero professional women athletes in an open category.
That's how big the gap is. And I for one value and think women deserve the spotlight to compete and show off their hard work and talent.
I've spent my life coaching women at the elite level to do so.
You might here people say it's a ban. It's not.
Every athlete still has a place to compete. You can do so in the category that matches your biology, in open events, or recreational events that this does not apply to.
A rough analogy: Longevity guru Bryan Johnson can't compete in the under 18 category no matter what age score his crazy metrics say he is.
We have categories and classification to ensure everyone has a chance to compete.
Yes, we pick what categories are important. But it's hard to argue that sex isn't a very important one.
So there you have it. It's been 20 years in the making. It started with DSD athletes with an androgen advantage winning championships and has evolved from there.
It's not perfect. Nothing is. We've debated, shifted policies, etc. But lots of smart folks and researchers have been trying to figure out a just and fair solution for a long time.
A new Policy on Protection of Female sport. The IOC earlier announced a new policy that not only tells federations to ensure that women’s sport excludes males, but introduces screening for eligibility. Here’s our podcast on how we got here & what it means https://t.co/tWNwkMJ0xK
Guardian piece by me - From Laurel Hubbard to sex testing in five years: why the Olympics U-turned on transgender rules
Spoke to several people about this ... quite a few mentioned Paris, others the IOC election, science, Coventry's drive and Trump too!
https://t.co/6ELHUphbnj
The International Olympic Committee announces new Policy on the Protection of the Female (Women’s) Category in Olympic Sport.
Read: https://t.co/QcU5IVxyTi
¡HISTÓRICO! 🔥🛹🥈
ANGELO CARO 🇵🇪 ES SUBCAMPEÓN MUNDIAL
Nuestro compatriota hizo el mejor truco de la final (91.34) y sumó un total de 173.32 puntos para quedarse con el segundo puesto en la final de street del Mundial de Skateboarding de @worldskatesb
¡Gracias, Angelo! 💪✨️🇵🇪
10 years ago today: Warriors vs Thunder 2016 RS (The GREATEST Regular Season game in NBA History)
Final 20 seconds of the fourth + OT!
Including the infamous "DOUBLE BANG" call on a Steph Curry Game Winner 😤
Today, we celebrate the birthday of one of the greatest natural talents the chess world has ever seen: @GMJulioGranda.
From rural Peru, far from the traditional centers of chess culture, Julio rose to the world elite without coaches and with virtually no reliance on chess literature. No Informator, no ChessBase. His use of engines and databases was minimal, and only at a later stage of his career. That did not prevent him from holding Kasparov and Karpov to draws, or defeating players such as Topalov, Gelfand, Ivanchuk, and Morozevich. At his peak around 2000, Granda was firmly inside the world top 20, a remarkable achievement given his unconventional path.