Emma Hilton Profile picture
Oct 2, 2021 12 tweets 4 min read Read on X
This is Lisa Carrington. She is a New Zealand canoeist.

She won three gold medals at Tokyo 2020 and became NZ’s most successful Olympian ever. Image
This is Caitlin Regal. She is a New Zealand canoeist.

She won her first Olympic gold medal at Tokyo 2020. Image
This is Emma Twigg. She is a New Zealand rower.

She won her first Olympic gold medal at Tokyo 2020. Image
These are Kerry Gowler and Grace Prendergast. They are New Zealand rowers.

They both won their first Olympic gold medals at Tokyo 2020. Image
These are the New Zealand women rugby 7s.

They won gold medals at Tokyo 2020.

Michaela Blyde
Kelly Brazier
Gayle Broughton
Theresa Fitzpatrick
Stacey Fluhler
Sarah Hirini
Shiray Kaka
Tyla Nathan-Wong
Risi Pouri-Lane
Alena Saili
Ruby Tui
Tenika Willison
Portia Woodman Image
These brilliant female athletes gave New Zealand their highest number of gold medals in nearly 30 years.

Well done!
More brilliant NZ sportswomen!

The current netball world champions (and I've seen them play live!)

This is Tupou Neiufu. She is a NZ paralympic swimmer. At two years old, she was injured in a hit a run, and left with a permanent brain injury causing hemiplegia.

She won her first Olympic gold medal at Tokyo 2020. Image
This is Lisa Adams. She is a NZ paralympic shotputter. She has left hemiplegia.

In 2020, she won her first Olympic gold medal and, in separate competition, set the world record for her event. Image
This is Sophie Pascoe. She is a NZ paralympic swimmer. At 2 yrs old, she suffered severe leg injuries, resulting in left amputation below the knee, in an accident.

She did not win her first gold medal at Tokyo 2020.

She joined an elite club of 40 athletes with 10 Olympic golds. Image
This is Anna Grimaldi. She is a NZ paralympic sprinter and longjumper. She was born without a functional right forearm/hand.

She jumped her way to her second Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020. Image
This is Holly Robinson. She is a NZ paralympic javelin thrower. She was born without a left forearm/hand.

She won her first Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020. Image

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More from @FondOfBeetles

Dec 25
I ran a fairly straightforward analysis of track and field performances across junior ages in different track and field competitions.

The raw analysis looks like this for international records. Above the line is male advantage, below the line is female advantage.

This pattern its repeated across national and state-level competitions. You can see that for almost all events at all ages, boys hold advantage over girls.Image
Image
Where female advantage is detected, this is easily explained.

At 10 years old, girls grow ahead of boys, and catch up/overtake them briefly in running.

The female advantage in discus at 15-16 years old is because girls throw lighter implements.

The distance drop off as boys move to the 2 kg discus is obvious.Image
But actually, while these data are good for getting a handle on the magnitude of advantage, I came up with a slightly different question to ask of them.

With help from @johnarmstrong5, I came up with a null hypothesis: if there is no difference between boys and girls pre-puberty, the frequency of boys and girls "winning" should be around 50/50.

So I collapsed the performances as wins or losses. See below for international records, scored as wins for the boys above the line and wins for the girls below the line.Image
Image
Read 5 tweets
Dec 16
Hello @michaelshermer

Please see the following links to various papers and commentaries I and others have published on sports categories.

Please follow me (obvs 😂), @TLexercise @Scienceofsport @runthinkwrite @cathydevine56 @BrowngaGreg @MaryOConnorMD @DrMJoyner and associated scientists for academic work.

Guys, add your papers below please.
Where it all started (academically): “the muscular advantage enjoyed by transgender women is only minimally reduced when testosterone is suppressed.”

There are a couple of letter responses linked to this too.

link.springer.com/article/10.100…
Tommy @TLexercise has worked with transgender women with an eye specifically on sports.

academic.oup.com/jcem/article/1…

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jo…
Read 6 tweets
Dec 8
Let’s have a think what hormone categories looks like. And let’s assume that @neiltyson is considering a high/low T category. This has also been proposed by @AliceDreger

Thanks for the shoutout, Colin @SwipeWright
The proposal only works if you don’t deny evolution and sexual selection. Remarkably, there are academics who argue there is no biological basis for why males run faster than females. While it is plausible ongoing underinvestment in female sport means female athletes have not yet reached their full potential, it is frankly ridiculous to think this can explain the entirety of the performance gap.

See Sheree Bekker et al for more details on why, because one time, this one female figure skater won a medal, Usain Bolt should be allowed to race against females.
The proposal only makes sense if we recognise that the action of T on a body gives advantage in sport. This is by no means universally-accepted. Many humanities types argue T is not a key part of sports performance, citing males with low T and people registered as female with high T. Even though both phenomena are explicable by factors like illness, doping and male DSDs, still this argument persists.

See Veronica Ivy, Katrina Karkazis et al for why we should pretend that the stupidly high prevalence of weightlifting males with low T is not because they have just finished an off-period jacking up.
Read 17 tweets
Nov 13
Why male advantage in sport is not a social construct: height.

Height is a key difference between males and females. What is nature v nurture? What does that mean for sport?Image
Bigger skeletons are most obviously driven by longer bone growth. Key bones like those in your thigh (“long bones”) grow from their end to get longer, making you taller. Image
The site of bone lengthening is called the “epiphyseal plate” or “growth plate”. Here, cells divide/enlarge, making new tissue that pushes the bone ends apart. This tissue calcifies and is replaced by bone, leading to lengthwise growth. Image
Read 21 tweets
Nov 11
Ok, my charity wears off.

Bekker’s presentation of the “Hilton and Lundberg” argument is nonsense.

At no point have either of us, or anyone else we work with, reduced male advantage to simply muscle mass/strength. @TLexercise @Scienceofsport Image
In the contrary, we have consistently argued that male advantage stems from many physical then functional outcomes of male development.

We spent hours (actually days 😂) creating this graphic, trying to highlight key areas of physicality that underpin male advantage.

HowTF is this reduced to “it’s all muscle”?Image
In our original paper, we had a table upfront, highlighting (in a less pleasing presentation) the same type of metrics. Image
Read 7 tweets
Nov 11
I’m going to put my charitable hat on, and try to elucidate - maybe even, as good practice, steelman - an opposition argument.

Specifically, this one: Image
Let’s set a concrete example: the 10 second barrier (100m sprint).

Wiki - allowing for small errors - tells me that around 200 male sprinters have broken it. We know, of course, that no female sprinter has been close (Flo Jo record 10.49s).
For the following, I’m going to ignore the premise that humans might be close to biomechanical limits over a 100m sprint. It’s just an illustration.

If we follow world record progressions, we see trends (not just in sprinting, the graph below is from a swimming event). Image
Read 18 tweets

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