WRONG

i posted one bad link, admittedly, and one good one. people -now- are certainly running the 100m dash, in high school, in the sub-10.5 range. only the best of the best are doing it, but it is happening.

Steven, you could go outrun Flojo in front of Jesurgislac and she’d still argue the point with you. She honestly believes it is inconceivable that an 18 year old in 2008 could possibly outrun a 19 year old from 1912 (Don Lipincot b. 1893, 10.6, world record until 1920).

I give up. No reasoning with crazy people.

Quite.

Ah, you’re the new troll on the block, Sarcastro. I wondered who it was.

I do not possess a mystical, magical internet enabled sex detector. That insult was perfectly gender neutral (and purposefully hyperbolic). Male or female, you really don’t have so much as the first clue about what you are opining about and these knee-jerk accusations of sexism leavened with healthy doses of ignorantly misguided scorn speak only to your own biases and insecurities.

I’m not even a sports expert.

OK, so you’re not wrong all the time.

I’ll gladly entertain notions of sexism in sports where the physiological differences are minimal or actually tend towards favoring females - like auto racing for instance - but I will not blithely ignore plain facts in order to insist we should expect to see women playing offensive line in the NFL.

But you asked: where exactly did i make a mistake, other than posting a questionable link?

A questionable link to an official Illinois site which was supposed to prove the point you were making, and doesn’t - because it doesn’t distinguish between 100 yards and 100 meters? You do recognize downthread that this matters - you do know the difference between yards and meters - and, yet, you asserted: this is the all-time record list for the illinois state boys’ 100m dash:

there are 39 people listed with a 10.4 or below.

That list includes, quite close to the top, such questionable data as “10.3, Allen Spafford, Morrison, 1914″

In 1912, the Olympic winner of the men’s 100 meter dash did it in 10.8 seconds. So you are either claiming that in Illinois boys routinely run faster than Olympic champions of either gender… or you were linking to list of records that made no distinction between the 100-yard dash and the 100-meter dash.

Guess which I think is more likely?

And you know what? I’m not even a sports expert. I didn’t know what the men’s 100-meter-dash record was at the Olympics. I just thought that data looked wrong - too fast too long ago - and I checked, and it was.

You asserted: this is the all-time record list for the illinois state boys’ 100m dash:

there are 39 people listed with a 10.4 or below. some of those numbers might be manually-timed and iffy - however, the current official national high school boys’ record is 10.15 sec, set in 1990. the official illinois state record is 10.37. (my own personal best in high school was a 10.9 - good, but not good enough to qualify for state.)

That list includes, quite close to the top, such questionable data as “10.3, Allen Spafford, Morrison, 1914″

In 1912, the Olympic winner of the men’s 100 meter dash did it in 10.8 seconds. So you are either claiming that in Illinois boys routinely run faster than Olympic champions of I think is more likely?

high school boys run 100 meters, not 100 yards. i know this because i did it myself, between 1996-1999. (i also ran 200 meters.) the 100 meters i ran were definitely longer than the 100-yard football field inside the track. they were also the same as the 100 meters on the college track where really big meets were held.

You know, what’s interesting to me about this comment - especially in the context of boys hating to be beat by girls - is that you need to try to make this out to me being “wrong all the time”.

Stephen made a mistake. Too bad.

The one that stands out was the guy ON MY TEAM who kept telling me “Choke up on the bat!” until I wanted to shove it up his ass. And, hey, look, I struck out when I followed his advice, but I got a base hit when I did it my way. It’s almost like I knew what I was fucking doing or something.

Yeah, my only experience of mixed sports at high school was the same. We played hockey and netball together and the boys did not hesitate to shove, thump and grab as much as possible in order to prove their supposed superiority to us. Can’t be beaten by a girl, see?

Unfortunately for them, we girls all hit, thump and pushed right back. Blood was shed, literally. We got banned from contact sports after a particularly brutal hockey bloodbath involving a hip dislocation one autumn afternoon and were forced to play tennis, badminton and squash only after that. Believe me, the boys didn’t like being beaten at tennis etc either.

FTR, I didn’t go toa rough school, either. The group I’m describing was composed of the top set of girls and boys in our year. We were, especially by modernstandards, ‘nice’ kids and the boys ‘nice’ boys.