Originally Posted by
OBoile
Yeah. VO2 max is a pretty obscure thing when it comes to cycling performance.
Again, you are cherry picking. Races are decided by who crosses the finish line first, not by who has the highest VO2 max (or FTP, or fastest sprint, or watts/kg, or LT, or any other single measure). Winning a race is vastly overdetermined and pointing out that men and women may be similar in one particular measure doesn't make men and women comparable bike racers.
Originally Posted by
OBoile
Perhaps we should look at some numbers.
As I understand it, the best flying female 200m time is 10.154 seconds.
F35-39 SPRINT - Qualifying Round - Result 2019
Rachel McKinnon did 11.649. That gap of roughly 1.5 seconds is 50% larger than the gap between the men's and women's WRs. None of these women are anywhere near what the best women in the world can do and I feel pretty confident to say that if any of the best women wanted to keep competing as a Masters rider, they would smash this record pretty easily (thanks largely to their genetics).
Those numbers are irrelevant. Compare apples to apples. Compare elite to elite - men's WR vs women's WR:
24 hour - Men - 585 miles; Women 445 miles
Hour - Men - 34 miles; Women - 29 miles
And the men's flying 200m WR is 9.1 seconds.
You can find similar results in various distance time trials. Compare winning speeds when men and women race the same stages. Ask a race organizer running multiple fields on the same course how they keep the men and women from overlapping during the race.
Regardless of whether men and women are similar in any (or even every) other respect, the winners of men's races are faster than the races of women's races at the same level.
FWIW, you keep diminishing master's racing and suggesting this is a trivial "hobby" to the competitors. If that was true, why is it so important to McKinnon that she wear the rainbow jersey? She could outride everyone else at the local gran fondo and no one would complain. Maybe McKinnon realizes that those rainbow stripes represent the accomplishment of a lifetime for the elite few who wear them, and taking advantage of her biological advantages takes something away from the competitors who spend years working to get to that level. She should realize that her activism stirs up opposition even among people who otherwise support her transition and accept her how she chooses to present herself (notice the pronouns?).