Women’s increased voice in athletics
can be seen in their improved performance
Recently, we have seen women playing a more important role in the Olympic Games in Paris, where sports were in full swing.
For the first time, the number of male and female athletes was equalized in this year’s Olympics. In the Chinese Olympic team in Paris, more than 66% of the athletes were women. Realize the number of people on the scale of the righteous “half the sky”!
Wu Yanni on the track, Zheng Qinwen on the tennis court, Quan Hongchan on the diving platform… Female athletes are attracting more and more attention. The history of the Olympic Games over the past 100 years is almost a history of the development of “HER POWER”. Especially in the ultra-endurance sports, gender barriers are being broken down.
Women were first allowed to run the marathon in 1972, and in 1984 the women’s marathon was finally included in the Olympic program, with Joan Benoit-Samuelson, the winner of the first women’s marathon gold medal in Los Angeles in 1984, finishing in 2 hours, 24 minutes and 52 seconds, surpassing the time of the men’s marathon winner at the 1956 Olympic Games.
In recent years, the world has seen not only African runners, represented by women’s marathon world record holder Tigst Assefa, but also China’s Ma Zhenxia, who won the Olympic gold medal in the 20-kilometer race walk, among others.
Gender is not a boundary
In traditional endurance events, such as the marathon, the difference between men’s and women’s performances is around 10%, but in ultra-endurance races, the difference between men’s and women’s performances is as low as 4%, even though there are not as many women competing in the races. In ultra-distance endurance races lasting more than six hours, women often outperform men.
Ann Trason, a member of the American Ultrarunning Hall of Fame and the strongest elite female trail runner, has been beating male athletes and breaking records for more than a decade of her career. In the ultra-distance 46-kilometer swim, the top 20 female athletes outperformed their male counterparts by 12 to 14%. This has to be considered very impressive.
Ultra-endurance sports are leading the way for women to break through the gender barrier.
A review published in Sport Medicine mentions that women’s high percentage of slow muscle fibers, high fat utilization, and high fatigue resistance of respiratory muscles are physiological fatigue-resistant traits that women are born with, which gives them an advantage in ultra-endurance events and breaks the assertion that men are objectively better suited for the sport, thus making the Olympic Games, which was initially a men’s arena, gradually become the Paris Olympics with exactly the same number of male and female athletes, which is a top level sporting event. Athletes were exactly equal in number, and this steady increase and equalization of participation in top-level events is a great testament to women’s increased athletic performance capabilities.
Ultra-marathoner and four-time world record holder Fiona Oakes once said, “The longer the distance, the less of a gap between men and women.”
In 1988, Ann Trason won the 24-hour run at the National Championships, breaking the American record with a time of 143.09 miles, nearly four miles ahead of the first male finisher. And she continued to break records and beat male athletes for the next dozen years of her career. Her athletic performance first sparked a debate about whether women, would begin to consistently beat men in ultra-endurance sports.
A recent study analyzing ultra-marathons showed that gender differences in athletic performance diminish with distance.
When comparing the fastest running speeds over different distances, it was found that men were faster in the 5-42.2 km range, and that female athletes were significantly faster than men after the 90 km mark. In races over 195 miles, female athletes were already 0.6 % faster than males overall. This result has also been confirmed in cycling and swimming, two traditionally long-distance events.
At the Paris Olympics, female athletes made history: China’s women’s basketball team won an early ticket to the Olympics as global runners-up; 15-year-old Liangshan girl Yang Siqi was the first surfer to make an Olympic appearance; and 14-year-old Shandong skateboarder set a new best time for a Chinese athlete in the women’s street skateboarding event at the Olympics.
In addition to competitive sports, women are also getting involved in more social programs, not only in yoga and Pilates, which have been labeled as women’s sports, but also in outdoor sports such as Frisbee, rock climbing, flag football.
Physiological differences give “HER POWER”
While the gap in athletic ability between women and men is recognized, the ability to excel in ultra-endurance events is the result of an interplay of factors, with women’s physiology playing a role in ultra-endurance events.
Muscle fiber type
Females (44%) have more type I muscle fibers than males (36%), and type I muscle fibers are more resistant to fatigue due to their higher myoglobin/mitochondrial content.
Muscle mass and strength
Men have larger muscle fiber diameters than women, but stronger muscles exert higher pressure on blood-supplying arteries, thereby restricting blood flow and making them more susceptible to fatigue during sub-extreme exercise.
Central regulation
Central nervous fatigue indicates a reduced ability of the brain to recruit motor units, or a decrease in impulse frequency. In women, anaerobic metabolites, such as lactate, accumulate at a slower rate during sustained exercise due to the higher number of type I muscle fibers. The low metabolite levels have a diminished level of inhibition of motor neurons, and the brain still maintains a good ability to recruit muscles.
Respiratory muscle fatigue
Respiratory muscle fatigue reduces the oxygen uptake of the athlete, which in turn exacerbates dyspnea and reduces blood flow rates during exercise. The diaphragm, one of the major respiratory muscles, is more resistant to fatigue in women than in men.
Substrate utilization
During endurance exercise, the female body automatically chooses to burn more fat but fewer carbohydrates, and women’s fat stores are inherently relatively high.
The above differences in physiological factors contribute to women’s greater resistance to fatigue, which is reflected in race pacing: female athletes will maintain a more stable pace and the drop-off in the latter part of the race is not as severe as that of male athletes. The average pace drop of male athletes was significantly higher than that of female athletes, at 15.6%, compared to 11.7% for female athletes.
Also, women are generally recognized as having greater willpower and the ability to make quick, smooth mental adjustments, compensating for their inherently lower oxygen carrying capacity in terms of physical fitness, as well as their tendency to develop gastrointestinal disturbances, or the negative effects of estrogen on cellular function.
Women are often tacitly assumed to have a higher threshold for tolerating pain. But the truth is: women are more sensitive to pain and less able to suppress it than men. Thus, it is clear that the superior willpower and relative stability of mind, essential to the maternal strength that nature has endowed women with, are also important elements in the achievement of female strength.
HER POWER supporting half the sky
It’s not just in competitive sports that female athletes are excelling, it’s also off the field where women are taking on the lifestyle of sports and demonstrating their “HER POWER”.
Nowadays, we see women taking the initiative to go into the free weights area, which used to be dominated by men, and even taking on the challenge of extreme sports. Whether it’s climbing a mountain or traversing a rugged snow-covered mountain, physical strength and athleticism are being incorporated.
Physical strength and athleticism are included in the definition of modern femininity and femininity. More and more women are not seeing the need to choose between sports and femininity, she can be whatever she wants to be.
There is also a growing push to break down barriers, with campaigns such as Sport England’s ‘This Girl Can’ aiming to play sports more social, adaptable, self-affirming and safe. Gender barriers are also being broken down in all sports, from the Chinese being inspired by Jialing’s inspirational transformation into a fighter to more women in hardcore outdoor activities in recent years.
More and more sports leaders are emerging in women’s sports, with UFC fighter Weili Zhang and six-time CrossFit women’s champion Tia Clair, among others, influencing people on and off the field with inspiring stories.
Role models maximize individual women’s self-awareness and spontaneously form communities to share guidelines for healthy living. Exercise becomes a fun and challenging long-term lifestyle, and a powerful and positive energy that shapes women.