Good point. Take a gander those of you who may incorrectly think higher endogenous T levels strongly correlate with improved athletic performance, strength, etc, etc.
Complicating all of this is the fact that elite athletes’ testosterone levels vary quite a lot. One analysis found that 25 percent of elite male athletes have testosterone levels below what the International Association of Athletics Federations consider the lower limit for men. What’s more, it wasn’t the athletes in less strength- or speed-oriented sports. Some of the events with the most men below the limit were powerlifting, rowing, track and field, ice hockey, and rowing. Basketball players and alpine skiers had some of the highest levels. That all seems to imply, at least to some researchers, that high testosterone isn’t a universal performance booster.
Holt agrees. “It strikes me as far too simplistic to say that the only difference between men and women is their testosterone levels.” If you’re going to look at performance differences, he says, you also have to look at sociological ones. There are almost certainly biological differences that mean men will always outperform women to some degree, but he points out that teenage girls are much less likely to compete in sports at school than boys and are given generally worse facilities. Male athletes are paid much better than female ones on the whole. Holt says these and other factors mean “there are a whole load of sociological reasons that may also drive men to coach and be driven to achieve at a high level beyond testosterone.”
Besides, the idea that a naturally occurring variation in some women’s bodies is somehow unfair doesn’t mesh with how much we exalt male athletes with unusual abilities. Michael Phelps’ muscles produce half the lactic acid of a normal person, enabling him to push himself for much longer without fatigue. Finnish cross-country skier Eero Mäntyranta has an inherited mutation that increases his red blood cells’ oxygen-carrying capacity by 25 to 50 percent, which is the genetic equivalent of doping. Those men were celebrated, not pillaried.
Sports are inherently unfair, and while there have to be some regulations to account for true cheating, it seems like a double standard to demonize women for the same kind of natural advantages that we appreciate in men. And to simplify the entire debate down to a single (albeit important) hormone ignores a great deal of biology and sociology, says Holt. “We should celebrate those biological differences.”
This last part I don’t buy…clean sports. Natural advantage OK but chemical assistance is BAD? Some people are true freaks and why shouldn’t us lesser mortals use any and all tools available to level the playing field? Where’s the true fairness?