?? wrote:That last argument makes no sense at all, as stated in the article, yes it takes women a few minutes longer to run a 10k, but that in no way means they are not capable of handling the distance (or a heck of a lot farther), it has nothing to do with physically being able to lift a certain weight of implement or jump high enough to clear a barrier, as mentioned, do they cut the boston marathon short because it takes women another 15-20 minutes to finish? No.
I obviously didn't express myself clearly. As I said, if I were in charge I would have men and women both run 6k or 8k in order to allow more 800/1500 track runners to compete in cross country. It would also be easier to manage races using the same course layout for men and women.
However, I don't think it's a big deal that the men and women run different distances in cross country. Just because the distances or implements are different in an event doesn't make one inferior to the other. No one would ever say that running the 1500m is inferior to running the 5000m because the distance is shorter. They are just different but equally valid race distances. The 100H is not inferior to the 110H, just different. If, given the preferences of women runners or the kinds of women runners who are available, the 6k makes the most sense in cross country, that doesn't mean that the 6k distance is "inferior" to the 10k distance run by the men, just different. Women are obviously capable of running 10k but if that's not the distance women want to run in cross country, there's no reason to change it to 10k just because men run 10k.