men v women or vice versa lol

[Zanda]

In my Blog, I was musing as to why the men and women shoot in different classes at competitions. In mho there are quite a few women who could more than hold their own when shooting against men !, in both compound and recurve, in this day of equality between men and women (so called) is it time to make archery shoots totally open.
If you think yes then say so, if not then say so, come on folks, lets have your feelings about this one.

[mizzat]

I've always wondered about this. Shooting compound bow, I think most top archers shoot similar poundage. Many females shoot over 50 pounds. So I can't see why they should seperate the sexes into classes. Is there a suggestion that females are inherently less accurate with abow than a males. I can't see how that could be the case. Is it just the way things have always been? Why not seperate archers based on the bow weight rather than sex?

Steve

[Watch_Man]

Most lady archers are 5'6" or shorter most gents are 5'5" or taller. Most ladies have shorter draw lengths than men and do not pull the same draw weights.

Just look at the results of the top 10 lady and gents in major competitions and compare them.

Take my wife Wendy, she is 5'1" and has a 24" draw pulling 43lb. Put her against Andy R or Chris W both over 6ft pulling 60lb with 30" arrows.

There is some overlap, no doubt, but the majority of lady archers do not have the same physical advantages as the men.

Just look at how much easier it is for a gent with a long arrow length and high draw weight to spine a max diameter line cutter and then compare it to the 2114 my wife shoots. And outdoors the gents can shoot flatter trajectory arrows at higher speeds giving significant advantages, especially in the wind.

At a local level Wendy holds her own against the men, however at higher levels I believe it gets to a point where physical advantages can compensate for skill.

[wanshu]

Simple solution is when and where the individual wishes to compete they should be allowed to on an equal footing. They could challenge the rules if they wished I'm sure. Equality in all things.

So the man asks "Who buys the drinks"? Woman says "Both of us, but it still comes out of your pocket". Man "OK dear".: under his breath, "Women".

The Vegas comp, I'm sure the guys competing would shudder and smile a little at the thought of the little ladies being there on the line with them.

Especially when they have an equal chance of taking away the top prize. Less of an advantage having higher poundage indoors.

[grimsby archer]

Simple:
seperate competitions for men and women gives us guys a chance!

If we had an open "recurve" shoot for both genders there would be one trophy and maybe 3 medals?
With seperate competition, thats 2 trophies, maybe 6 medals?
More chance of winning something

[tel]

to save me actually looking it up....
anyone know how the records stand? Should be a good indicator of equality (or not).

[felixity]

apparently the olympic record for the qualifying round (72 arrows) is 676 for the ladies and 684 for the men. female team 1984, male team 2031

[rstamp]

These are the last ones I found and may have changed since.

NATIONAL RECORDS
TARGET ARCHERY OUTDOOR
FITA & GNAS METRIC ROUNDS
20 APRIL 2007
R/C U/C L/C B/B L/B
Gents FITA Ladies 1202 1273 1047 0 507
Gent 1325 1405 1187 1041 795
Ladies FITA Ladies 1347 1397 1148 1129 771

[Erika]

kg for kg men are physically stronger. I shoot 60lbs. But i have to work considerably harder to maintain that than the men that i shoot with. Even if they are the same body weight as me they build and maintain muscle more easily. Even in diet terms that sucks!!!! Marcus eats junk and maintains the 60lbs easy... i have to up protein, iron, calcium and calories just to get there.

In general, the men that i shoot against have 3inches extra draw length, 30% more muscle mass (i believe that's the statistic... but not sure), 20kg+ in body mass, and 4" in height.

The Aussie mens compound team in Leipzig: Clint, Pat and Rob. They'd average around 115kg each... when shooting next to them in wind that i can't stand up in they're like 'what wind?'. lol shooting between them is great... best wind breaks ever

Recurve: Dave Barnes, Tim Cuddihy, Sky Kim.... all easily over 90kg. All over 6 foot. A girl can start feeling somewhat petite in this veritable forest of man mountains.

Granted this isn't always the case - Braden, Liam etc... But even then they outweigh me and naturally carry more muscle mass.

I like shooting 90m and I enjoy shooting against the men, but I'm also realistic in knowing that they have a physical advantage over me so I have to work harder for the same result.

[speed]

Indoors i see no reason why men and women can not compete equally but outdoors the comments above about draw length and physical size and mass do have some bearing on the level of competition.

But what really gets me going is the different scores required by women indoors compared to men, yet GNAS do not recognise that children\juniors should have different scores for each level.
Why should my ten year old boy have to score the same as me ( he shoots around 12lb i shoot nearly 42lb both recurve) indoors this is completeely and totally out of order and needs changing by GNAS immediatly or are they advocating discrimnation and non encouragement of juniors???

Sorry to rant but we should be encouraging juniors not penalising them because GNAS can't find a few hours to sit down and decide on appropriate scores for them to reach the indoor classification levels.

Yes I have spoken via email to the GNAS junior secretary over this.


Going back to the original post on this thread I agree that poundage at full draw cold be used to group archers outdoors possibly better than the system we have at present.