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Male -v- Female Tricks

20K views 63 replies 22 participants last post by  cocolulu 
#1 ·
After a stint of watching winter X games the other day, I notice there is a massive gap in the difficulty and type of skills being performed by the males and females in snowboarding.

While the guys were doing massive 1080's and beyond the girls where lucky if they landed a 720 and the commentators where going wild about it! I only saw one girl do a single side somi and I don;'t think she landing it (sorry I'm not down with the lingo yet) in the superpipe where the guys were laying down 2-3 three doubles in one stint.

Why is female snowboarding so behind the men, are girls more reluctant to try out the big skills, are the boys just crazy? Are the girls restricted in competition?

I'm not critising in anyway I think its ace that the ladies are out there, just don't understand the skill level gap.

If I started snowboarding, which I'd love too if I had some snow (UK) I'd want to be doing all the big airs, throwing some doubles, doing all the stuff the guys are doing and if I survive that I'd even create some new unseen skills. Anyone seen a triple somi in ski or snowboard yet?
 
#2 ·
You see the same thing in surfing, but I think it's a bit simpler in that Female surfers are generally not as aggressive, or physically as strong. In that case it's not a bad thing, just a different style than men.

There's no good reason to not throw-down if you are a lady that shreds :)

Anyway, besides competition who really cares about gender?
 
#3 · (Edited)
i really think it comes down to physical limitations. The guys are just bigger so they weigh more and are stronger so they can get higher off jumps and out of the pipe so they can throw bigger tricks . As said in another thread it is also about testosterone lol. It seems that guys just tell fear and injury consequence to fuck off better than girls do, so they huck way bigger tricks. Also i have noticed that guys seem to progress almost twice as fast as girls do when learning to board, but that has just been a personal observation. Oh but i love riding with girls that are on the same skill level, its way fun riding with a girl that can hold her own, i gotta find more of em!
 
#5 ·
it's because girls do push ups from their knees and swing from closer golf tees
 
#7 ·
There's just a massive gap between male athleticism and female athleticism. A phenomenal female athlete would be an above average male athlete.

I went to HS with a girl who was a top 10 national basketball recruit. She was an unreal athlete for a girl, but she wouldn't have even started for the men's team. That's just the type of gap there is.

Appreciate the women's riding for what it is, but you'll always be disappointed if you compare it to men's riding. With that said, if there was a guy at your local hill ripping it up like the top chicks, you'd say that fucker could ride his ass off... and you'd be right.
 
#8 ·
'for a girl!' Love the little chauvinistic digs the men unwittingly pop into their posts (know what your getting at though)

I wish I'd had the cash and the snow to snowboard 20 years back when I was young and super fit.

Love the Jeep photo's, very manly
 
#15 ·
where are you seeing "style" in womens comps? half the time they dont even land their tricks, and when they do about half of that is a mixture of no grabs or flat out flailing for air stability. if you want to watch style in 360s and 540s just watch a snowboard movie, where its all about the cool shots.

it's not just see how many rotations you can do without falling.
what do you expect out of a competition that is supposed to push the boundaries of the sport? Comps are for showing who is the best, and you get that with technical tricks that one up others, not "oh how tweaked that 360 is, must be FULLLLL of style".
 
#17 ·
Really? Why don't women play in any male professional sports? Because they flat out can not compete. It is nothing offensive, but the flat out truth. Males and females have completely different body types. If you need an example just look at male vs female body builders and you will really see the difference.
 
#18 ·
I think Tech is right. There are differences in physical capabilities between men and women just like there are physical differences in capabilities between men and horses. I don't feel bad that a horse can beat me in a foot race, why should a woman care that a man can beat a woman at things that men are better at? Kind of a self-fulfilling prophesy thing.

Prejudice/bigotry/sexism doesn't consist of recognizing differences -- it's about pre-judging someone, i.e. you're a woman so you couldn't possibly be a firefighter. If you're 5'4" and 98 lbs I'd say yeah, you can't be a firefighter whether you're male or female. But if you're Venus Williams I think you could probably carry me out of a burning building just fine.

Here's an interesting stats trick: Take 100 random men and 100 random women. Line up all the men by height, and all the women by height, and go down the two lines comparing each woman to each man. Statistically you should get at most one woman taller than one man. Now randomize the lines and do the comparison again. I can't remember the exact figure, but I think it's about 30% of women taller than their male counterpart. The point is that when you're dealing with the best of the best like Olympic athletes, the men are pretty much guaranteed to be better. When you're talking about a random sampling of people, there's a good chance that any individual woman could be faster, stronger, or a better snowboarder than any individual man.
 
#20 ·
what do you expect out of a competition that is supposed to push the boundaries of the sport? Comps are for showing who is the best, and you get that with technical tricks that one up others, not "oh how tweaked that 360 is, must be FULLLLL of style".[/QUOTE]

You're right, guess that's why I don't really watch comps.
 
#23 ·
As has been repeated, men have pretty clear physical advantages - especially in the area of muscle mass, but I would say a lot of it is social and mental. Testosterone and "male-dominance" play a big part. You get a group of males together and you see a lot of attempts to one-up each other. You get a group of females together and there is less of that push to compete, though it's usually more of a supportive atmosphere.
 
#31 · (Edited)
I think this is also a large part of it. Although halfpipe/park snowboarding isn't the same as alpine racing, and they have different physical demands, you still don't see nearly as large as a skill gap in skiing as you do in snowboarding even though the physical differences are largely the same.

I think there just aren't nearly as many women who are interested in taking their snowboarding to that level. This is anecdotal, but for example, among my friends, all the guys push themselves to go further and further, while all the girls are pretty content cruising down greens and blues. I think I'm one of the more serious learners among my girl friends, and even then, I have NO desire to backflip onto a rail, or double rodeo (or backflip) off of a kicker, like they show on videos that pop up here.

So really, it's our own fault that we're not doing crazy tricks... but I don't really care. I'm just out to have fun, my sense of accomplishment is personal. It would be cool to be a model/athlete like Torah Bright................... but eh whatever, who cares :laugh:

EDIT: And I don't do pushups on my knees either. And I can do more pullups than many fat tubby guys in PE.
 
#30 ·
I get that men are more physically fit for this type of action, buuuuut that's what training and working out is for. You ever see a women's body builder? You're telling me SW is bigger and badder than that. It's not that women are restricted, it's that they are to afraid to push themselves past those restrictions. If a women snowboarder dedicated their life to getting to a man's level I guarantee you they could. I've witnessed a ten year old who never works out and doesn't train for snowboarding do a 1080. You're telling me that a full grown professional woman athlete who trains is worse than him because women are weak?

I'm not bashing women because they can't do this stuff, which they can, I just don't understand why. Women in other sports have been able to compete at man's level. It was only a select few who worked hard enough, but why can't women in snowboarding do that. You can always overcome something, don't use it as an excuse.
 
#32 ·
Women in other sports have been able to compete at man's level.
This is patently false. There is a reason why men and women's sports are separated and it boils down to internal endocrine chemistry and biology. Just recently, Cristiane Santos was busted and stripped of her 145lb Strikeforce title because she tested positive for androgen stimulants. If you ever want to see even a shadow what a man competing against a woman directly would result in (especially in very direct arena, such as fighting), watch any of her bouts. She absolute demolishes other women and that's without the full androgen production capability and biology of a man.

Look at running, jumping, swimming etc. records for men are substantially greater than women. It's just biology. Male humans are evolved to perform physical laborious tasks. Sports are essentially just a series of physical tasks performed within a set of rules. To say women in other sports compete at a man's level is untrue and paints women athletes unwilling or incapable of working hard and achieving.

Snowboarding isn't as physical, but it certainly helps to have a physical advantage. Also, women's snowboarding, as a professional sport, is less developed than men's. At any rate, snowboarding isn't about being "the best". Competitions exist only to develop the sport's scope. The heart of snowboarding will always boil down to individuality and creativity.
 
#33 ·
Less about strength and more about difference in center of gravity and strength distribution.

Women have a lower center of gravity. They are much stronger in their legs than their upper body. Where men can be really strong in both upper and lower body. I'm not talking about women being weaker here. I'm talking about the difference in strength ratio upper vs lower body.

Not sure exactly how this affects riding differences, but I place my bets there rather than just strength differences.
 
#47 ·
Horse racing? Are you fucking serious? Shit I bet that there are more women professional checkers players too. How about something like car or motorcycle racing? Nope even the 4 foot nothing butch can't win a Nascar race. Don't even get me started on REAL racing(sorry ******** going in a circle isn't racing). I think that is more so that women can't drive than lack of physical ability.
 
#51 ·
lol i didn't want to get into this, but i have to correct you.

bet you didn't know that NASCAR has 2 (yes a whopping TWO) road races in its schedule, where they don't just turn left. Infineon Raceway and Watkins Glen. Also the sport of NASCAR isn't really about turning left its about strategy...you know like a long chess game (when to pit, how much air to tweak, roll bar tweaking, restrictors..etc etc) there is an enormous amount of tinkering that goes on in NASCAR to make each car better than the other car (since they are all the same by rules). Also believe it or not even turning left can be different for different drivers, it all depends on the line you take and when you apex a corner.

Besides that NASCAR has a lot of international drivers. Juan Pablo Montoya (former F1 champ), Marcos Ambrose (former V8 SuperCar champ), Kimi Raikkonen ( F1 and World Rally)...and the list goes on.

I am not a huge fan of NASCAR and i'm def not a ******* (born and raised in Ukraine and grew up in Brooklyn, NY), but I respect the sport for what it is. Just saying don't be ignorant of another sport.

/rant

carry on :p
 
#52 ·
Infineon is a bitch of a course, too. Also, JPM was never an F1 champ. He won the Indianapolis 500 back in 2000 during his only IRL season and had a Champ Car (CART) Championship a year or two before that. I think he may have an F3000 championship, too.

He is also 2/3 for the Triple Crown of Motorsport (Monaco Gran Prix, Indianapolis 500) needing only win at Le Mans to complete it.
 
#58 ·
The Corkscrew is wicked ... kind of like the Chad's Gap of auto racing. I read an article about how they built that track. They basically let the bulldozer crew just go with the terrain and then drafted the track after they had it leveled. Pretty cool, natural flow with the hills of California.
 
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