She Coulda Been a Contender

Meet Kuinini ‘Nini’ Manumua, the woman who spent her young life training to go to the Olympics and would have done so this year except she was replaced by a transgender athlete from New Zealand. Nini was competing for Tonga this year, although she has competed for the USA in earlier youth sports having dual nationality. 

I too might be able to compete in the Olympics in the squat event, if only I identified as female. Here's the comparison changing out only male vs. female lifts. 

Doubtless there's some adjustment for age, but setting the female lifting category to 18-23, I still rate better than 99.99% 'of lifters weighing 240 pounds,' which relatively few women do with a high muscle/fat ratio. That's got to be close to the Olympic level (whereas 98% simply is not, and the best lifters outweigh me by quite a bit anyway). 

Better luck in four years. Maybe by then the madness will have passed, and the young lady will still only be 25. 

UPDATE: Shows you what I know about the Olympics, which have never interested me. Apparently they don't do the squat at the Olympics. Who'd have thought you'd leave out the most basic strength lift from competition? But it's not a thing.

Here are some women who are squatting at the top of the game, and as I suspected, the top of the game is in the 600-700 pound range. That's absolutely admirable and they work hard to get there, but the top male range is hundreds of pounds heavier. Either let's throw out the sex/gender divisions once and for all, and let the best man win; or let's keep the women's division for women, who are physically quite different.