Why Are Jamaican Sprinters So Fast? 5 Potential Explanations [Femme FITale #4]

On today’s installation of Femme FITale, we’re taking a look at the fastest women in the world. More specifically, how a small, not particularly wealthy country in the Caribbean managed to take the sprinting world by storm.

Jamaican Excellence

Jamaica is home to around three million people, about the same number as live in Chicago. Although it’s classified as having an upper-middle income economy, Jamaica is still struggling, in part due to slow growth, high debt, and vulnerability to natural disasters.

In 2017, nearly 20% of Jamaicans lived in poverty. Additionally, the country faces relatively high levels of crime and violence (Note: all this according to the World Bank). Jamaica’s murder rate is three times the average of Latin America and the Caribbean, and it’s been considered multiple times to be in the top 10 most dangerous places in the world, particularly for women.

Compare this with the United States. The US has a population of around 328 million (more than 100 times the size of Jamaica) and a significantly lower poverty rate of around 13%. The country is considered to be very safe in most areas and is quite wealthy, with a lot of disposable income floating around.

You would think–purely given this comparison–that the US should dominate Jamaica in running competitions. The US has way more people to choose from and find the top talent, way more money to invest in sporting equipment and practice, and way less crime and poverty that could serve as a distraction/limit on competition.

But that’s not what you see when you look at the data.

Below are the top 10 medaling countries at the Olympic Games in the Women’s 100 meter and 200 meter sprints, ordered by total medals).

Jamaica is only 5 medals behind the US overall, they are nearly tied in silvers, and are even ahead on bronze. It’s incredibly impressive, and completely the opposite of what you’d expect if you just blindly looked at the backgrounds of the two countries.

What about when we look at Jamaica compared with the whole world. How do Jamaican runners stack up then?

Below we see the 100 fastest times for the women’s 100 meter and 200 meter sprints of all time. Note that this data does not only cover the olympics, but considers all major events. Jamaican runners are highlighted in Green.

We can see that Jamaican runners have performed excellently for several decades and that they are having a standout year in 2021. Five of the eleven fastest 100m times in 2021 were Jamaicans (including the two fastest overall), alongside three of the top ten 200m times (including the fastest overall).

In fact, there is only one individual who has performed better than the top Jamaicans: the iconic Florence Griffith-Joyner (Flo-Jo), whose sprint records in the 1980s were so dominant that they have never been topped since.

Jamaican excellence in athletics is relatively unique to sprinting. When looking at other Olympic events, it’s pretty rare to see a Jamaican medal. Jamaicans have only won a total of 87 medals across all sports, meaning that their sprint medals alone make up more than 1/4 of their total winnings.

So what’s going on here? Why does this small country, wrecked by natural disasters, facing horrible crime rates, and lacking tons of money, keep producing so many of the world’s fastest runners–including the fastest women in 2021?

Potential Explanations

There have been a whole host of potential explanations posed for this high performance, including heavy consumption of magical yams and green bananas. In this post, we’ll look at some of the most probable.

1. Track is a much more publicized sport in Jamaica than in other countries.

Beloved by Jamaicans, track is by far the island’s most popular sport. While in the US we have things like the Superbowl and the World Series, in Jamaica their big event is a track competition: The Boys and Girls Championships.

More affectionately known as ‘Champs’, the event takes place in Kingston ever March. It’s a huge spectacle. Five days straight of events–broadcast to national TV–with packed stands of more than 30,000 fans. And pretty much everyone, even if they don’t make it to the event, has a team or runner they’re rooting for.

If you want to be the superstar of your country and compete in front of thousands of fans–you do track. Nothing else really comes close in Jamaica.

And when you have everyone wanting to do a sport, you’ve got a lot more potential to find the fastest runners. Pretty much everyone wanting to be someone in athletics will try it, so you’re a lot less likely to miss the best runners because they went to other sports than you would be in other countries.

Look at the two fastest Jamaican women in the world: Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and Elaine Thompson-Herah. Both competed at champs in their early days,

2. The small size of Jamaica makes it easier to find superstars.

Jamaica is a pretty small country–only 3 million or so inhabitants, only a portion of whom are young and athletic enough to be potential future stars. This means the pool of athletes is relatively small.

While this could be considered a downside–fewer athletes to choose from–I think it’s also an upside in its own way. In a small group, it’s much easier to find the best athletes. You need a lot fewer eyes looking and are less likely to miss someone. This is especially true when linked to point #1. You only really need one person to spot your running talent in Jamaica since the love of track means that everyone wants to find the best stars.

3. Greatness is a self-perpetuating cycle.

Role models play a key role in the development of great athletes. Consider a 2021 study focusing on the effects of role models in changing the self-efficacy adolescent athletes.

This study, conducted by researchers at Seoul National University in South Korea, found that when adolescent athletes have role models that they model their behavior after, they appear to–on average–have higher self efficacy. Higher self efficacy, an individual’s belief in their own capacity to succeed based on their skills, in turn seems to lead to increased ability of young athletes to achieve a flow state (being “in the zone”). Although statistical analyses always involve some amount of uncertainty, the researchers calculated that there was a less than 1% probability that their results were purely due to random chance.

According to the science, when young athletes have accomplished role models, they tend to perform better. And in a place like Jamaica, those role models are easy to come by. The fastest man in the world–Usain Bolt–is from there, alongside many of the top fastest women of all time!

When you come from the same country as those legends, it’s not so far fetched to believe that you can be just like them.

This becomes more and more powerful over time, too. The more Jamaican sprinters that dominate international competitions and break records, the more that young Jamaicans will think they can do the same. When there’s only one top sprinter, they can seem like an anomaly–but when there are dozens, you start to realize that the goal of getting up there with them is not impossible.

4. Jamaica has some of the best coaches in the world.

Coaching may play a big role too. Jamaica is known for having some of the top coaches in the world, which could help give the country’s athletes an edge.

Prior to 1999–before Jamaica made a name for itself in sprinting–Jamaican runners were not trained in their home country, but rather were sent to the United States for training. Jamaica slowly started to make a switch toward home-training, though, and sprinters kept doing better and better.

The first home-trained sprinter to find international success was Brigitte Foster (now Foster-Hylton) in 2003. She was followed by many more Jamaican-trained athletes: Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, and Melaine Walker.

This switch proved successful for a few reasons. For one, it meant that sprinters had no chance of getting caught up in the US college system and being neglected or becoming more interested in college life than being the fastest in the world. But perhaps more importantly, Jamaica had fantastic coaches that kept pushing their athletes.

Again, we have the small country conundrum. How does this small island seem to magically have such great track coaches? One potential explanation is their focus on coaching training.

Even though it’s a small island, Jamaica has a dedicated college designed to train coaches: The GC Foster College of Physical Education and Sport. In a country where poverty and violence play a big role, coaching is a way to do something to escape that, and a dedicated program means lots of opportunity to develop skilled coaches.

5. Running is a way to escape poverty and violence.

In a place like Jamaica, with high poverty and crime rates, it can be difficult to break out of the cycle and escape a difficult way of life. There are not all that many great opportunities in the country.

Running, however, has proven to be an effective way to escape poverty–at least for the best athletes.

Consider the story of Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. She grew up in a one room building with no dining table. Some nights, all she ate was a little bit of bread and butter. Her family couldn’t afford all the groceries they needed, so they relied on a kind grocery store operator to be generous and help them.

She now has a net worth of around $4 million. And she’s not alone. Look up pretty much any top Jamaican runner and you’ll likely see a similar story.

If you can be one of the fastest runners in the world and impress fans on a world stage, it can be the break you need to escape a difficult life. This is a big reason why so many young runners train–and train hard. They want a way out. And they know that with hard work and a little luck, it’s not impossible.

Takeaways

So there we have it. Five potential reasons why Jamaican sprinters are so good. If you came into this with any knowledge of running, though, you might be a little confused. Why did genetics not show up on this list, when we know they play a big role in distance running?

Although “genetics” has been discussed many times as a potential explanation, it’s not backed up by evidence. If we compare Jamaican runners to black runners from the US–who tend to be their biggest competition–we don’t find any significant differences in their prevalence of so-called “performance” genes.

It mostly seems to be a combination of internal motivation, national culture, and good infrastructure for finding potential superstars that has led to Jamaica’s success.

The small island nation cracked the formula, and have cemented a permanent place in sprinting history.

Why Are Women So Good At Rock Climbing? [Femme FITale #2]

Rock climbing has risen into the spotlight recently after its addition to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, with more people than ever tuning in and being captivated by the amazing talent on their screens.

One of the most unique and exciting features about the sport, and part of why I personally find it so compelling, is the near absence of a gender gap–even at the elite level. The top female climbers can complete routes nearly as difficult as the top male climbers, and some women have even been the first overall to complete the most difficult climbs in the world.

Contrast this with other popular sports you might see at the Olympics. In sprinting, the men’s world record in the 100 meter dash is nearly a second faster than the women’s (9.58 seconds by Usain Bolt vs 10.49 by Florence Griffith-Joyner), a nearly 10% difference in performance.

In soccer, the gap is also quite large. The United States Women’s National Team (USWNT), one of the highest performing women’s professional soccer teams of all time, once lost 5-2 to a team of boys under age 15 in a practice match, a convincing defeat.

So what’s going on with rock climbing? Why does the gender gap appear to be much smaller than in other sports?

Rock Climbing Difficulty, Explained

Before we get into the details, first, a quick primer on how climbing skill (climb difficulty) is measured.

There are two primary styles of climbing at the elite level: bouldering and lead climbing. In bouldering, you climb without a rope and your climbs–termed “problems”–are usually relatively short and low to the ground. In lead climbing, you are roped in and hook your rope to safety equipment on the wall every few feet as you climb up. Lead climbs–or “routes”–are typically much longer than boulder problems and require a good deal of strength and endurance.

Boulder problems are rated difficulty-wise using the V-Scale (popular in the United States) and the Font scale (popular in Europe). Like Celsius and Fahrenheit, they are relatively simple to convert (see the table below).

The V-Scale currently ranges from VB (V-“beginner”) to V17, with the potential for growth in the future. Larger numbers reflect more difficult problems. The Font scale currently ranges from 3 to 9A, with larger numbers, plus signs, and letters later in the alphabet all representing more difficult climbs (e.g. a 6B+ is harder than a 6B, a 7C is harder than a 7B+, and a 5 is harder than a 4). Although grades are subjective and often debated, there appear to only be two boulders in the world currently graded the maximum level, V17/9A.

Lead climbing uses a different difficulty rating scale than bouldering: the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS). In this system, the difficulty ratings all start with the number 5 (representing a “technical climb”, since the YDS rates all different kinds of terrain), followed by a decimal and then a second number. The larger the second number, the harder the climb. Like the Font scale, the YDS also incorporates letters for climbs at the elite end of the scale. The YDS currently ranges from 5.1 to 5.15d, the rating of the world’s current hardest climb: Silence.

The difficulty rating systems for bouldering and lead climbing.

The Elite Women of Rock Climbing

Now that difficulty is hopefully a little more clear, let’s look at how both women and men have performed at the sport.

On the men’s side, the hardest boulder problems ever completed, to this date, are Burden of Dreams (V17, completed by Nalle Hukkataival in 2016) and Return of the Sleepwalker (V17, completed by Daniel Woods in 2021). No other climber has been able to repeat either problem.

The hardest men’s lead climbing routes ever completed were Silence (5.15d, completed by Adam Ondra in 2017) and Bibliographie (also 5.15d, completed by Alex Megos in 2020).

Although not quite matching the maximum difficulty of the men, women come in close behind. Five V15 boulder problems have been completed by women–Horizon, Sleepy Rave, Kryptos, Byaku-Dou, and Satan I Helvete Low (some of which were climbed by girls who were only 13 years old!)–alongside three 5.15b lead climbing routes (La Planta De Shiva, Ali Hulk Sit Start Extension Total, and Eagle 4) and a handful of 5.15a routes.

In some cases, women have even come out on top of the men. Perhaps the most impressive example is Lynn Hill, who was the first ever person to successfully climb the now iconic climbing route, The Nose, at Yosemite National Park.

In the early days of rock climbing, The Nose–a nearly 3,000 ft vertical climb up the front of El Capitan–was considered impossible to climb using only a climber’s strength and no mechanical assistance (termed “free climbing”). It consists of 31 pitches, which you can think of as individual climbing routes that climbers string together to get to the top. While most of the route it wasn’t that difficult in the scale of elite climbing, two pitches stopped everyone in their tracks: the “Great Roof” (graded 5.13c) and the “Changing Corners” (graded 5.14a/b), due to their almost complete lack of usable holds. Though routes more difficult than this have been completed many times in the last decade or so, it was almost unthinkable in the late 80s and early 90s. That is, until Lynn Hill came along.

Hill first attempted The Nose in 1989, alongside Simon Nadin, but they were unsuccessful. After four years, however, she came back–this time with Brooke Sandahl–and became the first ever person to complete the route by free climbing. It took her four days. Then, in an incredibly impressive feat, she returned within the year to complete it a second time in only one, setting the world standard for what could be achieved in big wall climbing.

Women are already performing at an elite level in rock climbing, and the gender gap only appears to be getting smaller There were next to no elite female climbers in the 80s and 90s, but now there is an entire women’s division at the Olympic Games. And every year, women seem to be inching upward in difficulty, breaking new records by climbing harder and harder routes.

Potential Explanations

So what’s going on here? Why are the women of rock climbing matching up to the men better than in other sports?

There does not seem to be one primary factor, but rather a collection of things that work together to help out the performance of female climbers:

Rock Climbing is a Bodyweight Exercise

One factor is that rock climbing is purely a bodyweight exercise. The sole goal of a climb is to move your bodyweight–and only that–to the top of the rock successfully. Pure strength and muscle size–where men have a clear advantage–are not necessarily an advantage. Since muscle is very dense, those who have a lot of it have a lot more weight to pull up the wall than those who do not. If their muscles are not optimized for the movements involved in rock climbing, they could essentially just operate as dead weight dragging the climber down, and actually be a hinderance to performance.

Elite rock climbers do not work to maximize strength, but rather to maximize their strength to weight ratio. Female climbers, who are typically relatively lightweight, can perform at the same level as significantly heavier male climbers as long as they develop strong muscles for their size–despite the fact that those muscles are lower in pure strength output.

At High Levels, Technique Is More Important Than Strength

A related factor is the importance of technique. At the lowest, beginner levels of bouldering and lead climbing, climbers can often get away with poor technique and just use their brute strength to get up a climb–a setup that favors male climbers. But at the intermediate level and above–particularly at the elite level–technique becomes much more important. A strong climber who can blaze through a 5.7 route will have no hope on a 5.12 unless they also know how save energy, place their hands and feet on small holds, and position themselves to where they can reach the holds they need.

Although men have an advantage with pure strength, the same can not be said for technique, where everyone is on an equal playing field. Women, in some ways, might even have an advantage. When learning to climb, it can be easier to rely on strength as a crutch, rather than focusing on technique, since easier climbs do not prioritize technique as much. As a result, women–who have less ability to rely on pure strength–are often forced to focus on technique starting earlier on in their climbing careers.

Evolution May Favor Equality

It has been argued in scientific research that sports involving actions that were critical to survival earlier on in human evolution tend to see a smaller gender gap than those that didn’t use evolutionary survival movements.

Climbing falls into this category due to its similarity to tree-based movement, which was essential in our ancestors’ lives long ago. Before humans became bipedal, we used a mix of ground and tree movement. We’ve evolved to be good at climbing, with short torsos, long arms, strong hands, and upright postures, features shared by men and women.

Since all of our ancestors needed to be able to climb trees to survive–not just the men–through selection pressure favoring tree-climbing skills, everyone–regardless of sex–developed these same features that now prove useful at rock climbing.

Women Excel at Endurance Sports

A big part of rock climbing–specifically lead–is endurance. Lead climbing routes, which can be over 50 feet tall, often require a sustained output of high strength and focus to climb without losing grip and falling. This need for endurance is an advantage for women, who have been shown to have higher resistance to muscle fatigue. Women can exert at close to maximum force for a lot longer than men before their strength weakens, giving them a relative advantage on the longer routes.

This advantage does not apply as much to bouldering, where problems are typically closer to 10 feet tall and only require a small number of moves.

Higher Levels of Motivation

Motivation is critical in the achievement of challenging athletic pursuits. Motivated climbers will go the extra mile to train harder to combat their weaknesses and will be less likely to give up when they’re struggling on a particular route or problem. Rock climbing is not an easy process–it can take dozens of tries to successfully complete a route, sometimes over multiple years of training–and if you are not motivated, you’re not going to get very far.

A study from 2018, which focused on competition climbing, found that women appear to do better than men in this category, with higher average motivation levels. This can give an advantage–particularly at the highest levels–in completing the hardest climbs in the world.

Looking Ahead: The End of The Gender Gap?

Despite the many factors helping women to success in the climbing world, there still appears to be a small gender gap, even if it’s noticeably smaller than in other sports. The hardest boulder and lead climbs ever completed by men are still several grades harder than the ones completed by women.

One reason for this is that there are simply a lot more male climbers than female climbers. In the early days of climbing, it was pretty much a men’s only sport, and while that’s no longer true, the men still outweigh the women by a lot. Go to any climbing gym–you’ll probably see at least 70% men there, and potentially even more. More men overall means more men at the top, plus men have had a longer time to complete these hard climbs and progress compared with women.

However, as the years go by, more and more women appear to be gaining interest, in part be due to the recent popularity of indoor climbing gyms which have made the sport much more accessible, but also due to the influence of talented female climbers making a name on social media.

If trends continue and more and more women get into the sport, we may see our first female ascent of a 5.15d in only a few years, and who knows what might come after that. It’s hard to know whether the women will ever fully equal the men, but all the factors at play certainly seem to put that in the realm of possibility.

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For more posts on women crushing it in sports, see the Femme FITale collection.

Why Are Women So Good At Rock Climbing? [Femme FITale #2]

Rock climbing has risen into the spotlight recently after its addition to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, with more people than ever tuning in and being captivated by the amazing talent on their screens.

One of the most unique and exciting features about the sport, and part of why I personally find it so compelling, is the near absence of a gender gap–even at the elite level. The top female climbers can complete routes nearly as difficult as the top male climbers, and some women have even been the first overall to complete the most difficult climbs in the world.

Contrast this with other popular sports you might see at the Olympics. In sprinting, the men’s world record in the 100 meter dash is nearly a second faster than the women’s (9.58 seconds by Usain Bolt vs 10.49 by Florence Griffith-Joyner), a nearly 10% difference in performance.

In soccer, the gap is also quite large. The United States Women’s National Team (USWNT), one of the highest performing women’s professional soccer teams of all time, once lost 5-2 to a team of boys under age 15 in a practice match, a convincing defeat.

So what’s going on with rock climbing? Why does the gender gap appear to be much smaller than in other sports?

Rock Climbing Difficulty, Explained

Before we get into the details, first, a quick primer on how climbing skill (climb difficulty) is measured.

There are two primary styles of climbing at the elite level: bouldering and lead climbing. In bouldering, you climb without a rope and your climbs–termed “problems”–are usually relatively short and low to the ground. In lead climbing, you are roped in and hook your rope to safety equipment on the wall every few feet as you climb up. Lead climbs–or “routes”–are typically much longer than boulder problems and require a good deal of strength and endurance.

Boulder problems are rated difficulty-wise using the V-Scale (popular in the United States) and the Font scale (popular in Europe). Like Celsius and Fahrenheit, they are relatively simple to convert (see the table below).

The V-Scale currently ranges from VB (V-“beginner”) to V17, with the potential for growth in the future. Larger numbers reflect more difficult problems. The Font scale currently ranges from 3 to 9A, with larger numbers, plus signs, and letters later in the alphabet all representing more difficult climbs (e.g. a 6B+ is harder than a 6B, a 7C is harder than a 7B+, and a 5 is harder than a 4). Although grades are subjective and often debated, there appear to only be two boulders in the world currently graded the maximum level, V17/9A.

Lead climbing uses a different difficulty rating scale than bouldering: the Yosemite Decimal System (YDS). In this system, the difficulty ratings all start with the number 5 (representing a “technical climb”, since the YDS rates all different kinds of terrain), followed by a decimal and then a second number. The larger the second number, the harder the climb. Like the Font scale, the YDS also incorporates letters for climbs at the elite end of the scale. The YDS currently ranges from 5.1 to 5.15d, the rating of the world’s current hardest climb: Silence.

The difficulty rating systems for bouldering and lead climbing.

The Elite Women of Rock Climbing

Now that difficulty is hopefully a little more clear, let’s look at how both women and men have performed at the sport.

On the men’s side, the hardest boulder problems ever completed, to this date, are Burden of Dreams (V17, completed by Nalle Hukkataival in 2016) and Return of the Sleepwalker (V17, completed by Daniel Woods in 2021). No other climber has been able to repeat either problem.

The hardest men’s lead climbing routes ever completed were Silence (5.15d, completed by Adam Ondra in 2017) and Bibliographie (also 5.15d, completed by Alex Megos in 2020).

Although not quite matching the maximum difficulty of the men, women come in close behind. Five V15 boulder problems have been completed by women–Horizon, Sleepy Rave, Kryptos, Byaku-Dou, and Satan I Helvete Low (some of which were climbed by girls who were only 13 years old!)–alongside three 5.15b lead climbing routes (La Planta De Shiva, Ali Hulk Sit Start Extension Total, and Eagle 4) and a handful of 5.15a routes.

In some cases, women have even come out on top of the men. Perhaps the most impressive example is Lynn Hill, who was the first ever person to successfully climb the now iconic climbing route, The Nose, at Yosemite National Park.

In the early days of rock climbing, The Nose–a nearly 3,000 ft vertical climb up the front of El Capitan–was considered impossible to climb using only a climber’s strength and no mechanical assistance (termed “free climbing”). It consists of 31 pitches, which you can think of as individual climbing routes that climbers string together to get to the top. While most of the route it wasn’t that difficult in the scale of elite climbing, two pitches stopped everyone in their tracks: the “Great Roof” (graded 5.13c) and the “Changing Corners” (graded 5.14a/b), due to their almost complete lack of usable holds. Though routes more difficult than this have been completed many times in the last decade or so, it was almost unthinkable in the late 80s and early 90s. That is, until Lynn Hill came along.

Hill first attempted The Nose in 1989, alongside Simon Nadin, but they were unsuccessful. After four years, however, she came back–this time with Brooke Sandahl–and became the first ever person to complete the route by free climbing. It took her four days. Then, in an incredibly impressive feat, she returned within the year to complete it a second time in only one, setting the world standard for what could be achieved in big wall climbing.

Women are already performing at an elite level in rock climbing, and the gender gap only appears to be getting smaller There were next to no elite female climbers in the 80s and 90s, but now there is an entire women’s division at the Olympic Games. And every year, women seem to be inching upward in difficulty, breaking new records by climbing harder and harder routes.

Potential Explanations

So what’s going on here? Why are the women of rock climbing matching up to the men better than in other sports?

There does not seem to be one primary factor, but rather a collection of things that work together to help out the performance of female climbers:

Rock Climbing is a Bodyweight Exercise

One factor is that rock climbing is purely a bodyweight exercise. The sole goal of a climb is to move your bodyweight–and only that–to the top of the rock successfully. Pure strength and muscle size–where men have a clear advantage–are not necessarily an advantage. Since muscle is very dense, those who have a lot of it have a lot more weight to pull up the wall than those who do not. If their muscles are not optimized for the movements involved in rock climbing, they could essentially just operate as dead weight dragging the climber down, and actually be a hinderance to performance.

Elite rock climbers do not work to maximize strength, but rather to maximize their strength to weight ratio. Female climbers, who are typically relatively lightweight, can perform at the same level as significantly heavier male climbers as long as they develop strong muscles for their size–despite the fact that those muscles are lower in pure strength output.

At High Levels, Technique Is More Important Than Strength

A related factor is the importance of technique. At the lowest, beginner levels of bouldering and lead climbing, climbers can often get away with poor technique and just use their brute strength to get up a climb–a setup that favors male climbers. But at the intermediate level and above–particularly at the elite level–technique becomes much more important. A strong climber who can blaze through a 5.7 route will have no hope on a 5.12 unless they also know how save energy, place their hands and feet on small holds, and position themselves to where they can reach the holds they need.

Although men have an advantage with pure strength, the same can not be said for technique, where everyone is on an equal playing field. Women, in some ways, might even have an advantage. When learning to climb, it can be easier to rely on strength as a crutch, rather than focusing on technique, since easier climbs do not prioritize technique as much. As a result, women–who have less ability to rely on pure strength–are often forced to focus on technique starting earlier on in their climbing careers.

Evolution May Favor Equality

It has been argued in scientific research that sports involving actions that were critical to survival earlier on in human evolution tend to see a smaller gender gap than those that didn’t use evolutionary survival movements.

Climbing falls into this category due to its similarity to tree-based movement, which was essential in our ancestors’ lives long ago. Before humans became bipedal, we used a mix of ground and tree movement. We’ve evolved to be good at climbing, with short torsos, long arms, strong hands, and upright postures, features shared by men and women.

Since all of our ancestors needed to be able to climb trees to survive–not just the men–through selection pressure favoring tree-climbing skills, everyone–regardless of sex–developed these same features that now prove useful at rock climbing.

Women Excel at Endurance Sports

A big part of rock climbing–specifically lead–is endurance. Lead climbing routes, which can be over 50 feet tall, often require a sustained output of high strength and focus to climb without losing grip and falling. This need for endurance is an advantage for women, who have been shown to have higher resistance to muscle fatigue. Women can exert at close to maximum force for a lot longer than men before their strength weakens, giving them a relative advantage on the longer routes.

This advantage does not apply as much to bouldering, where problems are typically closer to 10 feet tall and only require a small number of moves.

Higher Levels of Motivation

Motivation is critical in the achievement of challenging athletic pursuits. Motivated climbers will go the extra mile to train harder to combat their weaknesses and will be less likely to give up when they’re struggling on a particular route or problem. Rock climbing is not an easy process–it can take dozens of tries to successfully complete a route, sometimes over multiple years of training–and if you are not motivated, you’re not going to get very far.

A study from 2018, which focused on competition climbing, found that women appear to do better than men in this category, with higher average motivation levels. This can give an advantage–particularly at the highest levels–in completing the hardest climbs in the world.

Looking Ahead: The End of The Gender Gap?

Despite the many factors helping women to success in the climbing world, there still appears to be a small gender gap, even if it’s noticeably smaller than in other sports. The hardest boulder and lead climbs ever completed by men are still several grades harder than the ones completed by women.

One reason for this is that there are simply a lot more male climbers than female climbers. In the early days of climbing, it was pretty much a men’s only sport, and while that’s no longer true, the men still outweigh the women by a lot. Go to any climbing gym–you’ll probably see at least 70% men there, and potentially even more. More men overall means more men at the top, plus men have had a longer time to complete these hard climbs and progress compared with women.

However, as the years go by, more and more women appear to be gaining interest, in part be due to the recent popularity of indoor climbing gyms which have made the sport much more accessible, but also due to the influence of talented female climbers making a name on social media.

If trends continue and more and more women get into the sport, we may see our first female ascent of a 5.15d in only a few years, and who knows what might come after that. It’s hard to know whether the women will ever fully equal the men, but all the factors at play certainly seem to put that in the realm of possibility.

---

For more posts on women crushing it in sports, see the Femme FITale collection.

Who Are The Best Female Gymnasts of All Time? [Femme FITale #1]

In light of the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Olympic Games officially kicking off, I’ve got a bonus post today–the first in my new series: Femme FITale –– focused on recognizing women who have made a big impact in the fitness world (be it through competition, research, or business and entrepreneurship). 

For this installment, I’ll be focusing on the women of Olympic gymnastics––one of my favorite sports to watch (and one of the best parts of the Olympics!).

First, a quick history lesson. Women’s Artistic Gymnastics first became an olympic sport in 1928. There was only one event that year: the all-around team competition. It was not until 1936 that the games began to look more like they do today, with the individual all-around, balance beam, uneven bars, and vault events added to the schedule. The modern competition set was then finalized in 1952 with the addition of the floor routine. 

Since its inception in 1928, Women’s Olympic Gymnastics has been dominated by a small group of countries, with 10 teams taking home more than 90% of the medals.

Great Britain dominated the medal count in the early days but declined over time, the Soviet Union took over with a period of gold medal domination from 1952 to 1986 (performing worse, but still well, when it became Russia), and the United States and Romania medaled frequently, taking turns with each other and with Russia at the top of the medal count for several decades.

The Soviet Union’s run was one for the ages, with the team showing utter dominance throughout its reign. Even though the Soviet Union was only competing for just over three decades, they won 9 gold medals in the all-around––three times what the next two closest teams (The United States and Romania) have ever won after competing for around twice as many years.

Romania and the United States were bested by the Soviet Union in the race for all-around gold, but both countries have been dominant in their own right, taking quite a few silver and bronze medals––and together, nearly as many medals as all the other countries (except the Soviet Union) combined.  Romania has medaled in the team all around competition in 12 different Olympic games, followed closely by the United States at 9 games.

There has been clear dominance by the top three countries (The Soviet Union / Russia, The United States, and Romania) at the team level, but what about at the individual level?

Several gymnasts stand out for excellence against their competition–and they all come from the most competitive countries. In the table below, we see a list of the top 10 performing gymnasts who competed in a minimum of four Olympic gymnastics events throughout their careers, ordered by their medaling rate (total number of medals won / total number of events competed in). Each gymnast’s win rate (total golds / total events) is also included, alongside the percentiles of these rates compared with all other gymnasts who earned at least one medal in their respective category (at least one gold/silver/bronze for the medal rate percentile and at least one gold for the win rate percentile). Note that only 22% of competitors ever medaled in their Olympic careers, and only 9% won a gold. Non-medalists are excluded from percentile calculations to introduce a clearer spread between the best and the runners up.

So who are the best female Olympic gymnasts of all time, you might ask? It depends on the metric you look at.

Based on the data available through 2016 (the standings will likely change with the final results from Tokyo), a case could be made for Nastia Liukin, Marlya Kindrativna Horokhovska, Viorica Daniela Siliva in terms of medal rate. All three gymnasts medaled in all events they competed in, and each won at least one gold.
If win rate is more important than medal rate, however, different gymnasts stand out. Ecaterina Szabo and Simone Biles have the two highest win rates, each winning an impressive 67% (4 out of 6) of their events. 

There is no one answer, but if I had to put in my own two cents, I (and probably most others today) would  go for Simone Biles, who recently completed a vault so difficult (and theoretically all-time-high-scoring) and dangerous that judges limited its point value, likely to discourage others from trying it and injuring themselves.

Biles has already had an incredibly impressive career, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of it plays out (Go team USA!!).

Who do you think is the best of all time? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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For more posts on women crushing it in sports, see the Femme FITale collection.

Who Are The Best Female Gymnasts of All Time? [Femme FITale #1]

In light of the 2020 (2021) Tokyo Olympic Games officially kicking off, I’ve got a bonus post today–the first in my new series: Femme FITale –– focused on recognizing women who have made a big impact in the fitness world (be it through competition, research, or business and entrepreneurship). 

For this installment, I’ll be focusing on the women of Olympic gymnastics––one of my favorite sports to watch (and one of the best parts of the Olympics!).

First, a quick history lesson. Women’s Artistic Gymnastics first became an olympic sport in 1928. There was only one event that year: the all-around team competition. It was not until 1936 that the games began to look more like they do today, with the individual all-around, balance beam, uneven bars, and vault events added to the schedule. The modern competition set was then finalized in 1952 with the addition of the floor routine. 

Since its inception in 1928, Women’s Olympic Gymnastics has been dominated by a small group of countries, with 10 teams taking home more than 90% of the medals.

Great Britain dominated the medal count in the early days but declined over time, the Soviet Union took over with a period of gold medal domination from 1952 to 1986 (performing worse, but still well, when it became Russia), and the United States and Romania medaled frequently, taking turns with each other and with Russia at the top of the medal count for several decades.

The Soviet Union’s run was one for the ages, with the team showing utter dominance throughout its reign. Even though the Soviet Union was only competing for just over three decades, they won 9 gold medals in the all-around––three times what the next two closest teams (The United States and Romania) have ever won after competing for around twice as many years.

Romania and the United States were bested by the Soviet Union in the race for all-around gold, but both countries have been dominant in their own right, taking quite a few silver and bronze medals––and together, nearly as many medals as all the other countries (except the Soviet Union) combined.  Romania has medaled in the team all around competition in 12 different Olympic games, followed closely by the United States at 9 games.

There has been clear dominance by the top three countries (The Soviet Union / Russia, The United States, and Romania) at the team level, but what about at the individual level?

Several gymnasts stand out for excellence against their competition–and they all come from the most competitive countries. In the table below, we see a list of the top 10 performing gymnasts who competed in a minimum of four Olympic gymnastics events throughout their careers, ordered by their medaling rate (total number of medals won / total number of events competed in). Each gymnast’s win rate (total golds / total events) is also included, alongside the percentiles of these rates compared with all other gymnasts who earned at least one medal in their respective category (at least one gold/silver/bronze for the medal rate percentile and at least one gold for the win rate percentile). Note that only 22% of competitors ever medaled in their Olympic careers, and only 9% won a gold. Non-medalists are excluded from percentile calculations to introduce a clearer spread between the best and the runners up.

So who are the best female Olympic gymnasts of all time, you might ask? It depends on the metric you look at.

Based on the data available through 2016 (the standings will likely change with the final results from Tokyo), a case could be made for Nastia Liukin, Marlya Kindrativna Horokhovska, Viorica Daniela Siliva in terms of medal rate. All three gymnasts medaled in all events they competed in, and each won at least one gold.
If win rate is more important than medal rate, however, different gymnasts stand out. Ecaterina Szabo and Simone Biles have the two highest win rates, each winning an impressive 67% (4 out of 6) of their events. 

There is no one answer, but if I had to put in my own two cents, I (and probably most others today) would  go for Simone Biles, who recently completed a vault so difficult (and theoretically all-time-high-scoring) and dangerous that judges limited its point value, likely to discourage others from trying it and injuring themselves.

Biles has already had an incredibly impressive career, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of it plays out (Go team USA!!).

Who do you think is the best of all time? Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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For more posts on women crushing it in sports, see the Femme FITale collection.