Why are there so many more good Russian women runners than men runners?

agip wrote:

russian men choose other sports - for example, the endurance athletes go to xc xcsking. 3 of the top 10 ranked male xc skiers are russians. And 5 of the top 20.

Zero of the Northug's are Russian.

The sport Russians really like is hockey. Other than soccer of course.

Reggi Nytrid wrote:

Why do you need a citation? It's self-evident. Women have low natural testosterone levels, artificial supplementation greatly increases their testosterone levels, greatly increased testosterone levels lead to greatly increased performances in athletics, especially in strength-based events like sprinting.

Why do we need a citation? Because it's NOT self evident at all. If you are claiming scientific facts, then you should cite them. Where does it say that men can only supplement their testosterone levels so much? What is this limit?

lpd wrote:

This is not limited to Russian women,it's all European men.

East Germany in it's heyday produced way more elite women

runners than men.It is a general pattern among white athletes

that the women are more competitive than the men.If you take

the last 4 global championships,white women have won more

than twice as many medals than white men on the track.

how the eff are you not banned yet

As long as people get rewarded well for mediocority, the American women are not even going to compete with the African and Russian women anytime soon.

Bad Wigins wrote:

agip wrote:

russian men choose other sports - for example, the endurance athletes go to xc xcsking. 3 of the top 10 ranked male xc skiers are russians. And 5 of the top 20.

Zero of the Northug's are Russian.

The sport Russians really like is hockey. Other than soccer of course.

Don't leave out amateur wrestling, either. The Russian men's team is BY FAR the most dominant in the world and its been that way for decades. Iran, Azerbaijan, the U.S., and maybe a merry-go-round of a few other Eastern European countries would probably round out the top 5, but the gap is far and wide behind Russia.

I had a good laugh at the "Russian men are soft and pudgy" comment earlier in this thread.

Stamina plus strength-to-weight in Russian females, like with their ballerinas and gymnasts. Always seemed obvious to me.

Ivana Runalot wrote:

Stamina plus strength-to-weight in Russian females, like with their ballerinas and gymnasts. Always seemed obvious to me.

But why wouldn't that also be true of Russian men?

As to the idea that a higher percentage of male East African talent goes into running than female, that may be true but it doesn't explain international competitions. Each country only gets 3 athletes (maybe 4 at Worlds) so a country's depth counts for less. For example Rupp could get a silver or Flanagan could get bronze at the Olympics but I doubt they could come in 2nd in a race of the top 20 10000 runners by time because they would be swamped by the depth of East African talent.

There are lots of interesting ideas but to me the ones that make the most sense are top Russian men having other opportunities in sports or something else and PEDs. For the people questioning whether PEDs work more on women, I think it is obvious why, because with PEDs you are mostly just making women more masculine by increasing muscle mass/strength, etc. to levels that are common in men.

I came across an interesting blog that touches on this that compares the ratio of men and women in the 800 - 10000 for different countries. It definitely supports the idea that there are more good Russian women runners than men-http://dailyrelay.com/gender-gaps-world-championships/Looking at top 5 finishes, the US and Ethiopia have about equal success with men and women, Kenya, Spain, and Morocco have more successful men, and GB, China, and Russia have more successful women.It's very interesting data, but without any conclusion as to why men and women would perform differently-

While these trends are interesting, we are left to ponder the reason behind them. I came across an interesting article that tries to answer this question by regressing gender age gaps against the ratio of male medals to female medals. He found, albeit with a limited correlation, that there is a negative relationship between income inequality and the ratio of male medals to female medals. This means as the gender wage gap (difference between median incomes of men and women) widened, more females won medals relative to their male counterparts. The counter intuitiveness inspires the imagination as to what could cause such a finding. It may just be the case that data inspires the story, but does not complete it.

It seems to me you would probably have to give an explanation on a country-by-country basis, but maybe not.

If the theory that running is more dependent on flexibility than strength is correct then potentially a woman can be faster than a man since women tend to be more flexible on average, especially in the hips. I wonder if women have a potential for longer strides than men?