The Olympics

[Phishfan]

Is anyone watching? I can't watch live but I watch the prime time coverage each night when I get home.

[Dave Gray]

I have been watching a ton of Olympics.  They have this thing on YouTubeTV or Xfinity (and many other services, I'm sure) where they quad-box the sports.  It makes it much easier to stay involved with sports you aren't really watching too carefully.  I've been doing a ton of that.

[Pappy13]

Other than Woman's soccer I haven't watched consistently. I'll catch something every once in a while.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

The following women have all won medals in swimming for the US.....

Katie Ledecky
Kate Douglass
Katie Grimes
Katharine Berkoff

if you want your daughter to be a good swimmer name her some variant of Katharine. 

[Phishfan]

Is anyone up to speed on th women's boxing controversy? I'm curious about the thoughts on this. A brief rundown is there is a competitor who has been born with female body parts and has been considered female since birth. With the advanced testing these elite athletes go through it has been discovered that she is an anomaly and she has XY chromosome and is genetically male. This is different than the transgender scenario we have discussed before. She has been banned from other competitions but is allowed in the Olympics. I'm not sure I have had it sink in enough to form my opinion yet.

[Sunstroke]

I don't really have any opinion on Imane Khelif and her funky genetics either.  I just know that she looks a lot like Colin Kaepernick...and it weirds me out.

[Dave Gray]

Is anyone up to speed on th women's boxing controversy? I'm curious about the thoughts on this. A brief rundown is there is a competitor who has been born with female body parts and has been considered female since birth. With the advanced testing these elite athletes go through it has been discovered that she is an anomaly and she has XY chromosome and is genetically male. This is different than the transgender scenario we have discussed before. She has been banned from other competitions but is allowed in the Olympics. I'm not sure I have had it sink in enough to form my opinion yet.

I think I need the facts, but it seems like a lot of hollering from people who don't know the true details.  I hear conflicting information.  Among that, there are accusations that whatever testing suggested she was male was Russian propaganda because she beat a Russian athlete previously.  I have heard, then saw dismissed that she was XXY.  I also heard that she had some kind of abnormality where she just had high testosterone.

I think that a lot of the people making a stink about this are doing it in bad faith.  It pretty clearly has nothing to do with trans stuff in any way.

Ultimately, I trust whatever the IOC process is and I don't feel it's appropriate for me to assume I know more than whatever criteria these professionals base their system on.

I have always pondered about special cases like this, though, where someone has an unbeatable advantage (this isn't one of those cases).  But let's say a guy is 10 feet tall because of some weird condition.  ....where he could play basketball by simply placing the ball in the hoop.  What would we do in that case?

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

This is not a trans issue, but it is not new either.

Despite claims the from folks took middle school biology and think that makes them an expert there is in fact more than 2 sexes.  About 49% are male, 49% female and 2% are born neither male nor female but one of several intersex conditions.

The issue of intersex individuals whose genetic testing reveals male chromosomes but who have female appearing genitalia has long been an issue for sports.

My preference is that women’s sports should only be open to people who have female chromosomes, but mens sports should be intersex, trans and female athletes in addition to males.

[Spider-Dan]

Basically, a bunch of people who have been shouting for the last decade that sex is defined by genitalia are now insisting that the issue is much more complex than that.

The woman who lost is a whiny baby.  She voluntarily joined a "World's Hardest Puncher" contest and then quit seconds in because she got punched too hard.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

Basically, a bunch of people who have been shouting for the last decade that sex is defined by genitalia are now insisting that the issue is much more complex than that.

Bullshit.  This has been an issue since the 1960s.

[Phishfan]

On a different front,  the USA beat out Australia in both gold medals and overall medals with the final race in the pool today. There has been a rivalry between the two countries for years. This year had a bit of bulletin board material with one of the Australian women talking about the Americans pre race activities and how nice it is to not hear our national anthem when we fail to win.

[Downunder Dolphan]

On a different front,  the USA beat out Australia in both gold medals and overall medals with the final race in the pool today. There has been a rivalry between the two countries for years. This year had a bit of bulletin board material with one of the Australian women talking about the Americans pre race activities and how nice it is to not hear our national anthem when we fail to win.

Haha yeah, it's a fairly healthy rivalry! For a small country (in regard to population) it's nice to be up with the big countries.

That said, of all the olympic budget, the most Australian money goes into swimming, followed by cycling, and then the rest. If you look at it as a measure of gold medals per $$$ spent, there's a lot of pressure on the Australian swimming team (who have generally delivered, and the women a lot more than the men). Up until this Olympics, the cycling has been a monumental dud.

The best value for money gold medal won in recent times (in regard to spending) was Chloe Esposito's gold medal at the modern pentathlon in Rio 2016 which was comparatively peanuts.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-22/rio-olympics-2016-how-much-does-a-medal-cost-taxpayer/7748946

[Dave Gray]

The issue of intersex individuals whose genetic testing reveals male chromosomes but who have female appearing genitalia has long been an issue for sports.

I was unable to confirm that this is what is happening in the current controversy.

[MyGodWearsAHoodie]

I was unable to confirm that this is what is happening in the current controversy.

Testing revealed male chromosomes.  So she is either trans or intersex.   

[Dave Gray]

Testing revealed male chromosomes.  So she is either trans or intersex.   

Again, is this confirmed?  I heard that this was not substantiated and was a claim by a Russian body that only arose once she beat a Russian boxer and that it was propaganda/not in good faith.

I cannot confirm this, but I have not seen her outed as trans or intersex by a reputable source.


As I understand it, she was cleared by the IOC.  I don't have a dog in the fight; I just want to make sure that the facts we're working with are indeed the facts.