The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance by David Epstein Page A
Authors: David Epstein
Tags: Non-Fiction
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when boys very literally are on natural steroids.
At fourteen, the throwing gap, already wide, becomes a chasm. Boys develop stronger arms and wider shoulders, and by eighteen the average boy can throw three times as far as the average girl. Men also develop features that make them more difficult than boys and women to knock out: heavier brow ridges that protect the eyes and enlargement of the mandible that makes the face more resilient to blows. A glass jaw apparently did not cut it for ancestral men.
The testosterone surge of male puberty also stimulates the production of red blood cells, so men can use more oxygen than women, and it makes men less sensitive to pain than women * —just as it does to both animals and people who are given testosterone injections.
By around age fourteen, the average girl is closing in on her lifetime maximum sprint speed. World age-group records in sprinting are nearly identical for boys and girls at age nine, before puberty, when there is little biological reason for gender segregation in sports. By fourteen, however, the records are no longer in the same athletic universe. *
In some cases, women fare
worse
in certain athletic attributes after puberty. As estrogen causes fat to accumulate on widened hips, most girls experience a plateau or decline in vertical jump. And even the very leanest of adult female marathoners get down to around 6 to 8 percent body fat, double that of their male counterparts.
Studies of Olympians show that an important trait of female athletes in certain sports is that they
don’t
develop the wide hips that many other women do. If elite female gymnasts go through a significant growth spurt in height or hips, their career at the top level is essentially over. As they increase in size faster than strength, the power-to-weight ratio that is so critical to aerial maneuvers goes in the wrong direction, as does their ability to rotate in the air. Female gymnasts are pronounced over the hill by twenty, whereas male gymnasts are still early in their careers. China was stripped of an Olympic gymnastics medal from the 2000 Games in Sydney when the International Olympic Committee determined that female gymnast Dong Fangxiao was two years
younger
than the minimum competition age of sixteen. It is safe to say that we will never see a similar scandal in men’s gymnastics.
The advantage, then, that some female athletes have comes from certain traits that are more typical of men, like low body fat and narrow hips.
It now appears that a primary reason why women in track and field gained on men in the 1970s and ’80s—and what the
Nature
papers did not account for—was because they were making up for the lack of an SRY gene by simply injecting testosterone. Beginning in the 1960s, the competition of the Cold War spilled into sports, and the systematic doping of girls, often without their knowledge, was widespread in countries like East Germany. Since that era, top women in the most explosive events have gotten worse. Seventy-five of the top eighty women’s shot put throws of all time, for instance, came between the mid-1970s and 1990, predominantly from Eastern Bloc countries. That eightieth performance was a throw from East Germany’s Heidi Krieger, who decades later testified in court about systematic doping in East Germany. By that time she was Andreas Krieger, having chosen to live as a man after enormous doses of steroids, which are simply testosterone analogues, pushed her body in that direction. To this day, nearly all women’s world records in sprint and power events are from the 1980s, a testament to the powerful effect of male hormones on female athletes. Once the era of extreme doping ended, the performance gap between humans with and without an SRY gene stretched anew. It is now clear that the genetic advantage of men over women in most sports is so profound that the best solution is to separate them.
As Alice Dreger, professor of clinical medical humanities
At fourteen, the throwing gap, already wide, becomes a chasm. Boys develop stronger arms and wider shoulders, and by eighteen the average boy can throw three times as far as the average girl. Men also develop features that make them more difficult than boys and women to knock out: heavier brow ridges that protect the eyes and enlargement of the mandible that makes the face more resilient to blows. A glass jaw apparently did not cut it for ancestral men.
The testosterone surge of male puberty also stimulates the production of red blood cells, so men can use more oxygen than women, and it makes men less sensitive to pain than women * —just as it does to both animals and people who are given testosterone injections.
By around age fourteen, the average girl is closing in on her lifetime maximum sprint speed. World age-group records in sprinting are nearly identical for boys and girls at age nine, before puberty, when there is little biological reason for gender segregation in sports. By fourteen, however, the records are no longer in the same athletic universe. *
In some cases, women fare
worse
in certain athletic attributes after puberty. As estrogen causes fat to accumulate on widened hips, most girls experience a plateau or decline in vertical jump. And even the very leanest of adult female marathoners get down to around 6 to 8 percent body fat, double that of their male counterparts.
Studies of Olympians show that an important trait of female athletes in certain sports is that they
don’t
develop the wide hips that many other women do. If elite female gymnasts go through a significant growth spurt in height or hips, their career at the top level is essentially over. As they increase in size faster than strength, the power-to-weight ratio that is so critical to aerial maneuvers goes in the wrong direction, as does their ability to rotate in the air. Female gymnasts are pronounced over the hill by twenty, whereas male gymnasts are still early in their careers. China was stripped of an Olympic gymnastics medal from the 2000 Games in Sydney when the International Olympic Committee determined that female gymnast Dong Fangxiao was two years
younger
than the minimum competition age of sixteen. It is safe to say that we will never see a similar scandal in men’s gymnastics.
The advantage, then, that some female athletes have comes from certain traits that are more typical of men, like low body fat and narrow hips.
It now appears that a primary reason why women in track and field gained on men in the 1970s and ’80s—and what the
Nature
papers did not account for—was because they were making up for the lack of an SRY gene by simply injecting testosterone. Beginning in the 1960s, the competition of the Cold War spilled into sports, and the systematic doping of girls, often without their knowledge, was widespread in countries like East Germany. Since that era, top women in the most explosive events have gotten worse. Seventy-five of the top eighty women’s shot put throws of all time, for instance, came between the mid-1970s and 1990, predominantly from Eastern Bloc countries. That eightieth performance was a throw from East Germany’s Heidi Krieger, who decades later testified in court about systematic doping in East Germany. By that time she was Andreas Krieger, having chosen to live as a man after enormous doses of steroids, which are simply testosterone analogues, pushed her body in that direction. To this day, nearly all women’s world records in sprint and power events are from the 1980s, a testament to the powerful effect of male hormones on female athletes. Once the era of extreme doping ended, the performance gap between humans with and without an SRY gene stretched anew. It is now clear that the genetic advantage of men over women in most sports is so profound that the best solution is to separate them.
As Alice Dreger, professor of clinical medical humanities
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