Yes, women can compete with men, and doing so elevates our game

Colorado athletes deserve a moment to bask in the sun of their achievements.

Mikaela Shiffrin, of Vail, set the new record (male or female) for most career World Cup wins at 88 and brought the crystal globe home to Colorado for the overall World Cup title in 2023. She was named athlete of the year at the ESPY Awards this month.

Sophia Smith, of Windsor, was not only named the 2022 U.S. soccer player of the year, but the 22-year-old also landed in Sydney, Australia, to kick off her debut in the FIFA World Cup on Friday where she scored two goals.

Golden’s Lindsey Horan is co-captain of the national team and if she leads the team to victory it will be the U.S.’s third consecutive World Cup title. Horan scored the third goal in Friday’s game against Vietnam.

Taylor Knibb, who is training in Boulder following her debut in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics where she finished 16th in the triathlon, won the 70.3 Boulder Ironman last month with a commanding lead, setting the stage for her expected Olympic qualification in the coming months and the possibility that she could also compete in the cycling time trial in Paris in 2024.

Courtney Dauwalter, also training in Colorado, won the Western States Endurance Run, a 100-mile ultra-race up and down mountains, coming in 3rd place overall with a time that shattered records held by men for years. She then set a course record at the Hard Rock 100 a few weeks later coming in 4th place overall in the grueling 102.5-mile course loop from Silverton through Telluride and Ouray.

Even as these Colorado women push the bounds of elite sports higher and higher, there’s a shadow casting its ugly pall on their achievements. Their achievements face the eclipse of inequality.

No matter how high women have taken our game the shadow looms.

And just as women take massive leaps forward – equal pay in the U.S. Soccer Federation and a record although still not equal purse for their FIFA World Cup performances – something is dragging us back.

It has become fashionable for men and even some women across America to gleefully extol the inferiority of female athletes. From their platforms, these individuals call themselves defenders of women’s sports even as they tear down women by insisting that they cannot and should not compete with men.

These are the same people who know what Lindsey Vonn (who has often said in interviews that she wished she could compete on the men’s downhill course and prepared to do so in 2012) looks like in a bikini but can’t tell you who Picabo Street is. These are the same people who mocked Annika Sörenstam and Danica Patrick for competing against some of the greatest men of all time, but who now call themselves champions of female athletes. These are the same people who critique basketball star Brittney Griner’s body as too masculine but have never watched a WNBA game.

I’m not so naïve as to believe that a woman will ever break Usain Bolt’s record in the 100 meters. As opinion columnist David French pointed out in the New York Times last month, the gap between the best male and female performances remains somewhere between 7% and 25%. But his final conclusion closes the door on the benefits of women competing with men so abruptly that it’s clear he’s significantly undercounting how much an athlete benefits from competing against better athletes. His well-intentioned column also ignores the unbelievable sexism that female athletes face every day tearing them down, pushing them to focus on their body’s appearance rather than its performance.

The gap between men’s performances and women’s performances at the elite level will continue to close as women receive equal treatment in training, funding and support.

I know that equal treatment will only come when our youngest athletes are playing together in all sports regardless of gender. Separate but equal makes sense at the collegiate and professional or Olympic levels, given the existing gap in performance and the high stakes of scholarships, monetary awards, and sponsorships, but in America’s high schools, middle schools and elementary schools separate is most certainly not equal, nor is it rooted in performance.

High school teens, especially those at small schools or in small towns, should be welcomed and encouraged to play where they will benefit the most — if that means a freshman in Fountain aspiring to play Division 3 soccer on a scholarship plays on the varsity boys team to elevate her game, then that door should be open to her.

If you’ve ever watched young co-ed teams, you know that often in elementary and middle schools, girls outperform the boys in both fine- and gross-motor skills, speed, and other measures of athleticism.

So just who are we protecting by separating the genders so early? Certainly, we are harming not helping the girl who is better than all the boys even in middle school sports, but cannot compete with them.

We have got to trust athletes to know what is best for them in their particular sport and at their level of performance. Women can navigate the complexities of being advocates for themselves to have the competition and caliber of coaching they need and deserve to break through.

Knibb, who took 21st place overall in the half-Ironman event in Boulder last month, told me she doesn’t want to compete against men. Physiologically they are stronger and faster – she came in 20 minutes behind the male winner in Boulder.

Triathlons are beginning to host separate men’s and women’s events, which Knibb said is progress. All those elite men she had to pass in Boulder, despite them starting in a wave five minutes before her, sapped her energy and got in her way, she said.

Knibb does see the benefit, however, of training with men.

“You can train with males, and that’s what I think helps me the most,” she said. “You don’t want to be the best where you are training, so to find people who are challenging you, that’s where I really like to compare myself to men is training.”

And as for pay, Knibb said in the triathlon, the purses for men’s and women’s events are equal and have been for a long time. One benefit of modern sports just staking their claim in the Olympics is that they began with a foundation of equality. Her sponsor Trek in professional cycling events makes up the difference when a race has more money for male winners.

It’s undeniable progress, and elite athletes like Knibb should be listened to about how to make their sport fairer. Interviewing Knibb gave me so much hope for the future of women’s sports.

Annika Sörenstam told me in an e-mail that growing up in Sweden she and her sister played “open golf” that paired them with anyone, including boys and men.

“My sister, Charlotta and I always competed with the boys so we didn’t really think much of it. I do know when I practiced with men while I was on the LPGA, Tiger in particular, that took my game to another level, especially my work in the gym,” said Sörenstam, who played Pebble Beach last weekend during the first time the U.S. Open was held at the famed course for women.

I was a senior in high school 20 years ago when Sörenstam added cracks to the glass ceiling in the PGA. Her goal was to make sure as the top female golfer in the world she would continue to progress her game. Today many women have played in PGA tournaments and Sörenstam runs the Annika Foundation in America, providing opportunities for women’s golf at all levels.

Women need less consternation about the very few transgender women who happen to also be elite athletes and more focus and deliberate effort to ensure that girls, young women, and top female athletes’ are having truly equitable access to the very best coaches, training, and competitions. And yes, that often means welcoming girls and women to the playing field with boys and men.

I know what protecting and promoting women’s sports and female athletes looks like and most decidedly it is not harping on the fact that on average women are smaller and less muscular than men.

Instead, it is celebrating the fact that top female athletes, despite decades of sexism and disparate opportunities, are now in the small and exclusive group of the most talented and physically gifted humans on earth, men or women. On every weekend in this nation, in every town, there is a girl or woman beating a boy or a man in a head-to-head competition despite the physiological differences.

The more we focus on the equality of competition and equality of coaching and opportunity for girls and women, the more light will shine on the achievements of female athletes in America. The more time we spend telling young girls they cannot compete against boys for their own protection, the longer it will take for the gap in performance to begin to close.

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