By Jonathan Macfarlane
Debate is raging around the world about the relative fairness of biological males competing in sport against females. Many quickly send the discussion to technical aspects such as hormone levels, chromosomes, and more complicated questions, such as what to do with those who are inter-sex. The vast majority of the general public already know that males are generally stronger, faster, and more powerful than females. However, it has been my experience that many are shocked by how vast that gender gap is at the top levels of strength sports.
I’ve had a front row seat to compete with some of the strongest and most powerful athletes in history. Upon my retirement from an over two decade career in a range of strength sports (7 to be exact), most of my fondest memories weren’t my own performances, but getting the privilege of sharing the stage with some true freaks of nature.
Zydrunas Savickas from Lithuania is widely regarded as the greatest strongman ever, and my only hope of competing with him was at the breakfast table. “Big Z” polished off a platter of bacon and eggs before he made the rest of us look like children, sprinting across a Gold Coast stage with 450 kilograms on his back. I also won’t forget waiting in doping control in France with a disgraced Olympic Champion who was looking for a new sport after serving his own drugs ban. Then at 17 in high school, being able to spend a year training alongside the woman who would become the best shot putter in drug-tested history, Dame Valerie Adams. I never again worked harder than I did that year, and still only did a fraction of her training load.
So I am not of the opinion that female athletes are just delicate little things. However, I do have enough of an opinion forged in the trenches to know males have extraordinary advantages in strength and power.
I wish to share some anecdotal examples with figures from three strength sports to illustrate just how big the male advantage seems to be in Shot Put, Olympic Weightlifting, and Strongman.
I held the New Zealand Schools Records for both Shot Put and Weightlifting and was National champion for both. A couple of years later I won the NZ Strongest Man Title at age 20, and narrowly missed out on an invite to the World’s Strongest Man contest. That's not to brag, but more to say I was pretty good at a lot of sports, but always chasing after the truly world-class.
Shot Put:
New Zealand have produced 3 immensely successful professional shot putters with overlapping careers, in Valerie Adams, Tom Walsh, and Jacko Gill.
Valerie is the most well known. As a schoolboy in 2005, I spotted her on a 165kg bench press, which I maintain no drug-free woman was hitting worldwide. Valerie was preparing for her second Commonwealth Games, and not quite at her peak distance of 21.24 metres. She went on to win 4 Olympic Medals, including 2 Golds, and 8 Senior World Championships, doing so drug-free in a sport where steroids could give up to 4 metres benefit to a woman.
As a high schooler I was throwing a little further than her, which meant we had regular training contests where I may have been imagined as a real-life Belarussian nemesis. Later, a 14year-old boy from Takapuna Grammar, Jacko Gill, would throw the 4kg shot put further than Valerie's all-time best. While women throw the 4kg/8.8lb shot, the men’s weights increase with age to 5, 6 and then top out at 7.26kg/16lbs. If you’ve held those shots, the difference is immense in the hand.
Jacko won multiple age group World Championships, set the World Records for u/18 and u/20 groups, then recently threw an elite 22.12 metres with the men's 16lb shot. Tom Walsh, from Timaru, didn’t have as decorated a career as Jacko as a Junior, but has cemented himself as the most successful male shot putter in New Zealand, with a 22.90 metre personal best, 2 Olympic Medals, and 3 World Championship Golds.
Which of those three is the better thrower?
How do you compare men and women?
I'm not convinced Valerie would have hit much over 15 metres with a men's shot. There are urban legends of Eastern European women in training going over 16 metres in the 1980’s while taking all the drugs, and to my knowledge, none are verified.
American, Ryan Crouser, just threw 23.57 metres for a new World Record. The women’s record, still stands at 22.63 metres from the pre-drug testing era of 1987, with a shot nearly half the men’s weight. Video exists of Crouser in 2017 throwing a women’s shot a staggering 35 metres, or 115 feet. I have little doubt Gill or Walsh could send one out to 32 metres or more if they wished.
Yet everyone with a lick of sense acknowledges that Valerie's competition record and Olympic Gold medals put her at a different level to those talented Kiwi men. Even Crouser is yet on his way to becoming the male version of Adams.
There is no possible way to get a fair playing field if fourteen year old boys can outperform the women’s Olympic Champion.
Olympic Weightlifting:
After setting the New Zealand u/18 record, I set my goals on the Senior Men’s title and the Junior (u/20) record held by one Gavin Hubbard. Gavin was a world-class junior weightlifter, and I spectacularly bombed out at Nationals trying to break his records. Name sound familiar?
After something like a 16 year break, Gavin transitioned and burst back on the scene as Laurel Hubbard, eventually winning a medal as a woman at the World Championships. Many have argued that Hubbard didn't win gold, and therefore didn't have an advantage as a biological male.
I’d counter with five pieces of information:
1. Sarah Robles, who narrowly won, had just served a doping ban for a cocktail of steroids.
2. Hubbard as a teen, had the experience of lifting more than any woman.The body remembers.
3. Hubbard was 39, at least 10 years older than the other medalists. Olympic Weightlifters tend to peak around the early 20’s, not much later than swimmers. Masters age group records are significantly lower in comparison.
4. Flexibility is crucial to weightlifting. Hubbard’s technique seemed significantly hampered by a comparative lack of flexibility and an inability to squat deeply. The difference being, it is much easier to power up 160kg for a medal than 240kg in the men's super heavyweight class.
5. New Zealand is not in the habit of producing World Championship Weightlifting medallists, Hubbard was the first.
Were a peak male lifter allowed to transition in their teens or twenties, no amount of Russian illegal doping tactics could get close to that advantage.
Strongman:
The sport of Strongman brings an additional dynamic to the differences between male and female: that of an ‘anything goes’ environment without drug testing.
Steroids are accepted, and many of the women in recent years have moved beyond peptides and oral steroids and even taken Testosterone, evidenced by strong jawline changes.
A prominent strongman federation made an allowance for male to female transition, with a stand down period and hormone testing. At the time I realised as a man with a beard who is a bit bigger than an All Black front rower, I could still easily pass the hormone standards to compete as a woman. Ironically, my hypothetical female competitors weren’t required to pass a drug test. One all-time record holder in the sport of Powerlifting even disclosed her free Testosterone levels, at about 4 times a normal blokes.
The log press is a famous event at the Worlds Strongest Man contest. It is a brute strength, minimal finesse event. The women's record has increased 12% in the last few years to 140kg/308lbs. Many of the top women in the 130kg region are clearly taking Testosterone.
The men's record is 230kg/505lbs. 90kg more. A huge list have done over 200 including the current New Zealand champion. There isn't enough estrogen in a lab to stop top strongmen from being able to warm up with the women's world record.
Final Thoughts:
Anabolic steroids also are commonly understood to increase female strength performance more than amongst males. That shouldn’t be surprising given male Testosterone levels, and it can be easily demonstrated by how many track and field records still exist from the naughty 1980’s on the women’s side.
The absurdity of the dream of a level playing field is seen by top womens performances without drug testing. We know what women achieve:
10.49s in the 100 metre Sprint
22.63m with the 4kg Shot put
76m with the 1kg Discus
310kg Deadlift, and so on.
They're marks that elite 15 year old boys achieve.
It doesn't mean the women are weak, or that they don’t work hard. They just shouldn’t be measured against men.
The debate over whether biological males belong in women’s sports seems to be kept alive only by Sport Governing Bodies’ unwillingness to offend the privileged media class, progressive notions of equality, and the ability to hide behind the small sample size of male to female athletes who transition. Add to that, the focus of many policy makers is ultimately on increasing participation at the community level, with fair competition a secondary concern.
We've yet to be confronted with many genuine world class biological males attempting to compete as women in strength sports. But we have more than enough evidence to know that the male advantages are astronomical. The heartbreak of ignoring this for female athletes should not be understated, let alone other considerations such as changing rooms and factors that others have far more ably pointed out. In combat sports, getting this wrong could be fatal.
Simply, sport is for everyone, but women’s competition is for biological females.
Jonathan Macfarlane is a recently retired strength athlete who has won New Zealand championships in Strongman, Athletics, Olympic Weightlifting, Powerlifting, Highland Games, and more obscure sports you’ve never heard of.
New Zealand’s Strongest Man on Male vs Female Strength
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