Time for a Rethink

 Many moons ago, in fact many, many moons ago a rich gentleman called Bobby Riggs took on two women at tennis.

Both women were champions.

He beat one, lost to the other - Bill-Jean King.

Mr Riggs at the time was an older amateur. Against a male professional champion he wouldn't have stood a chance of even competing.

The reason given for the matches was that they would demonstrate the differences between women's sport and the male equivalent at a time where women were starting to demand equal remuneration for, arguably, considerably less performance.

The slime of the time played these games up as something different, pretending that King's win demonstrated an equality that has never existed.

Move forward to another age and once again we have a similar occurrence with an average college swimmer, rated in the 500s in men's swimming, putting on a sheila's swimsuit, changing his name and competing in sheila's events.

The newly named Lia Thomas continues to swim mediocre times for men but is beating the women's records by very large margins - one "record" he recently set beat the existing record by 38 seconds - in a sport that usually measures differences in hundredths of a second.

There has been a lot of comment about this fellow and how it is unfair on women that he compete but I wonder if that complaint itself is actually fair.

Mr Thomas, although unintentionally, appears to me to be demonstrating exactly why women's sport so often is irrelevant; that running faster, jumping higher, throwing further, swimming better for a woman, is no better than being the best in under 8 athletics and should be rewarded as such.

Sports administrators, particularly those of sports relying on large attendances and television viewers to gain sponsorship, should note this and start telling lower-level athletes the truth - i.e. unless you attract the same level of income by (in most cases)  producing the same quality of performance you will have to accept lower remuneration.

Only then can sport, ALL sport, return to the top as the greatest form of achievement an individual can attain.