Are ballet and synchronized swimming the only 2 athletic events that women are superior to men?

Thinking about it more, even though you didn’t ask, men seem to just be superior animals compared to women in that they are comparable to women in most spheres of life except sports or strength where they are superior.

I suppose you could say that women at the lowest IQ or math performance percentiles are superior to men, a stat that is counterbalanced by the smartest men being smarter than the smartest women (coz there is greater variance among men even though the averages are about the same). People talk about women having better EQ but that’s even more of a bogus metric than IQ.

Adding to the confusion about how physical sex differences come into play in bowling, in most places on earth mention of the word "bowling" instantly brings to mind cricket, the world's second most popular sport after soccer.

Cricket bowling is entirely different to indoor tenpin bowling. However, even though one uses overhand motion to propel the ball foraward and the other uses underhand, both kinds of bowling appear to favor players with male physiques, strength, power and body mechanics - albeit to far different extents.

The top male fast bowlers in elite cricket regularly bowl from 140 to 160 kph, whilst the top elite female fast bowlers usually only reach speeds of 110-115 kph. The top female fast bowling speed ever recorded is 128 kph. Men's cricket uses balls that weigh 163 grams, while women's cricket lighter balls of 140 grams. The bats in men's cricket are larger and heavier than the ones used in the women's game, and some aspects of the playing grounds are bigger too, though not the pitch between the bowler and player at bat.

To further complicate the matter of which kind of sexed body type is best suited to performing well in "bowling," there are various kinds of outdoor bowling other than cricket bowling - lawn bowling, bocce and boules/pentaque. Those kinds of bowling differ from both cricket bowling and tenpin bowling, and from one another too.

Women and girls, particularly post-pubscent girls, are actually not just much better than men and boys at most synchronized swimming or water ballet routines, we're the only ones who can do them. Or at least that's the case for the traditional kind of SS or water ballet in which much of the action is done whilst afloat in water by ensembles/teams of swimmers, individuals like Esther Williams, and two female swimmers in duets - as opposed to SS routines done mostly whilst standing on the feet or hands on the bottom of a pool or underwater platforms and props, or whilst hanging onto a pole or other vertical support.

Traditional SS requires swimmers to spend a great deal of time on their backs in unsalinated pool or lake water using the small hand and lower arm motions known as sculling to keep their bodies afloat on the surface in an absolutely even plane.

The people best suited to this have the buoyancy, body shape, center of gravity, bone density and weight distribution typically found only in girls and women, especially those who've gone through female puberty of adolescence and thus have acquired an extra layer of adipose tissue all over.

Most grown men and teenage boy cannot keep themselves afloat on their backs with their bodies on a perfectly even plane close to the surface like women and girls can - at least not in unsalinated water.

In synchronized swimming, particularly as it's practiced today, there are also a lot of moves where the swimmers are standing on their feet or hands on the bottom of a pool. Males can pull off those moves just as well as females. Moreover, males are much better at SS moves done from a standing position where they hold up another swimmer over their heads, and/or where they throw another swimmer into the air.

But when it comes to traditional SS moves and routines that require staying afloat on the back on the surface of unsalinated water with the whole length of the body kept on a totally or mostly even plane, boys and men don't have a chance. Try it and see. If you do, the term "sink or swim" will take on a whole new meaning.

Men's rhythmic gymnastics.

Mixed synchro duet.

Women are dynamite softball players. Sometimes I wonder if men could excel at softball also.

Sounds like your beliefs, not backed by empirical evidence based on head to head comparisons of men and women in competition.

Men throw and hit harder. So they could excel at softball. Men's fastpitch currently does not attract the top talent because there is no money (including college scholarships).

Was this all male or co-ed?

We are having three pages, maybe more of debate because there is such an overlap in humans. Many women can outsprint average men. Many women can out-swim the average man, (50 to 1500)m freestyle. Many women Marathoners can defeat the average man in Marathon. Many women can throw a baseball or softball harder than the average man. Lions do not have this debates. Lionesses are faster than lions. Lions stay back and protect the herd while the faster lionesses go out and hunt.

Maybe, but I have a hard time believing there is no overlap, ie that the slowest lioness is faster than the fastest lion, given that lionesses appear to be around 30% faster on average, which is around 2.5x the male advantage in humans, but our intrasex variance alone is much much higher, so you’d think there would be a nontrivial intrasex variance among lions too.

worldwideexperience.com

Are lionesses better hunters than their male counterparts?

Link:worldwideexperience.com/are-lionesses-...

I was going to say that women might be better at multi-week running, like Appalachian Trail distance, but it looks like men have pulled ahead there in recent years. However, women have held that record in the past.

Is it possible to find a lioness which is larger are stronger than a lion cub? Of course. Is it possible to find a lioness at peak fitness which is stronger than an ill lion? Of course. Is it possible to find a lioness stronger than an elderly lion? Of course. Lions and lionesses do have defined roles though. You could be a vet or vet student, I am not looking for a debate regarding lions. The gist of my last post: many mammals have significant size differences between the genders. Compared to other mammals, due to significant size overlap: many women are over 6'0 and over 175 pounds and many men under 5'6" at under 125 pounds. We can have this debate because those will multiple siblings of both genders and those with multiple kids of both genders, may see athletic overlap in their homes.

It seems to me like women should be as good at being a hockey goalie as men, but that may just be because I know very little about hockey. Several years ago, the goalie on Canada's Olympic-winning women's hockey team played minor league hockey in the U.S. for a few years in I think what would be a third-division league. She had played with boys/young men in Canadian junior & I think college leagues. To the extent I understood the stats, it looked like she was not as good as most of the starting goalies in the league but better than most of the backups.

But AFAIK, there never have been any competitions, nor are there any today, in synchronized swimming, aka water ballet or artistic swimming, where male swimmers in teams, pairs or as singles compete against female teams, pairs and singles by doing the exact same routines - which is the only way the performance of men and women could be compared head to head.

If you were to arrange some meets where men and women compete head to head doing all the same SS moves/routines, and it turns out there are no differences between how members of the two sexes do, and the guys are just as good at staying afloat for long periods with legs extended using various kinds of sculling like women in SS/WB traditionally have done, I'll happily admit I'm wrong.

Or perhaps I should say, I'll eat my swim cap.

But when you arrange these competitions, please play fair by requiring that the routines both sexes perform involve lots of activities that SS/WB traditionally featured, meaning activities that involve moving through the water and remaining afloat in the water using sculling and other swim strokes rather than just doing standard gymnastics and dance moves when surrounded by water.

Nowadays, a lot of what's called synchronized swimming or artistic swimming in compeititons seems more like typical floor-based tumbling, acrobatics and dance routines done in swimming pools. There's often way more standing on the feet and hands on the pool bottom, on each other's shoulders, waving the arms and legs in the air, and bodies being thrown or leaping through the air than actual swimming. Or at least that's the impression I get from what admittedly little footage of rececent-vingtage SS competititons I've watched.