Thread by @FondOfBeetles

I had a quick appearance on @bbc5live with Joanna Harper this morning. From 8:20 here:

bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/li…

I wasn’t given time to challenge Harper’s final words, so I will do so here. @markchapman @rachelburden

Harper: Hubbard doesn’t have an ‘overwhelming advantage’, therefore her inclusion is fair.

(Not verbatim)

Hubbard does have an overwhelming advantage.

Using her performances as junior male and Masters/senior female, and accounting for a small loss of strength in transition, estimates from my academic colleagues who study elite weightlifting put her male advantage at 25-50%.

A 25-50% male advantage is ‘overwhelming’ by even the most ardent of inclusion advocates.

What Harper and others are relying on to make fairness arguments, and which you @markchapman alluded to but didn’t pursue, is that Hubbard’s male advantage is obscured by Hubbard’s age.

Hubbard will be the oldest weightlifter ever to compete in the female category, by far the oldest to challenge a medal, and she is doing so five, sometimes uncompetitive, years after a nearly twenty year gap.

If you correct for Hubbard’s age - that is, if you work backwards from current performance to a hypothetical late-20s Hubbard - she is better than gold favourite Li Wenwen and the female world record holder.

As a junior male, Hubbard showed national level talent, but was certainly not, nor ever predicted to be, a world beater.

Yet as an unusually old athlete with a long career break, is up there as an Olympic medal chance in the female category?

Hubbard is competing, as far as we know, within the rules.

The rules that have permitted this situation are faulty rules, and the case of Hubbard demonstrates how faulty they are.

Male strength advantage, acquired during puberty, is large. It is not removed by any meaningful degree by testosterone suppression within IOC rules. There was published evidence of this when the 2015 guidelines were decided. That evidence was ignored.

But nobody should be fooled into thinking that because Hubbard is unlikely to win, that’s proof there is no overwhelming advantage.

It is only Hubbard’s age that will spare the blushes of the IOC and their committee members.

And to reiterate, it is Hubbard’s male advantage that has permitted competition and medal challenges at the age of 43, a situation unprecedented in the female category.

Am now waiting to see if @mrjamesob calls me back ;)