How we measure athletic strength

Every Olympics, NBC reminds its American viewership that swimming and gymnastics are the most important sports, which is convenient since the United States excels at those events. It's handy to be the arbiter of what matters.

The same dynamic applies to how we've defined athletic strength itself.

If sports didn't exist and we were starting from scratch, we might intuitively define athletic strength as endurance, resilience, and ability to handle pain. After all, the ultimate test is who can keep going the longest when everything hurts. Study after study shows that women excel over men in those categories.

As Starre Vartan points out in the Washington Post, determining which gender is stronger depends entirely on what success metrics we choose to prioritize.

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