Finally, female Boston Marathon runners are being treated unfairly again

Adding a "nonbinary" division is another concession to relentless weirdos who need boundaries and a "Sorry, you're not that special" instead

Although the 127th Boston Marathon isn’t for another six months, it’s been in the news recently for having to disqualify one of its female champions for a doping violation for the second time in eight years.

Rita Jeptoo, who set a course record of 2:18:57 in 2014, tested positive for EPO six months later, shortly before winning that fall’s Chicago marathon. After the Kenyan’s initial two-year suspension was extended to four years in October 2016 owing to extensive interference from the Jeptoo camp, her 2014 results were annulled. And last week, the Athletics Integrity Unit announced that 2021 champion Diani Kipyokei had tested positive for triamcinolone after her apparent victory, making her one of ten Kenyan runners to piss hot for metabolites of that corticosteroid in 2021 and 2022. From the UK Times story:

Triamcinolone is a powerful steroid that acts as an anti-inflammatory and both reduces weight and increases endurance. The convicted dopers Lance Armstrong and David Millar have both admitted to using the drug during their cycling careers, with Millar describing it as the most “potent” drug he used.

Millar, the Scottish cyclist who was banned for two years in 2004 for EPO but returned to ride professionally until 2014, saying that a drug was the king of the PED class carries the same heft as Charlie Sheen making the same claim about mood-altering substances.

An “images only” post that should publish itself here minutes after this one does addresses the surface history of triamcinolone in sports. This includes the fact that while the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has suspended zero athletes for positive triamcinolone tests in its 22 years of existence, it has suspended 78 athletes since 2000 for cannabinoids. Among this rowdy bunch are seven Paralympic-class competitors, five of them track-and-field athletes. Travis Tygart must be almost as pleased with the progress of the organization as he is with himself at this point, wherever he’s off golfing and knocking glasses with Phil Knight.

If the Boston Marathon wants to informally pre-screen its elite field for likely dopers, it and every other major marathon has one option available: Eliminate prize money. That won’t happen, but if it did, it would return Boston to its flailing 1985 state, when two runners in the entire field broke 2:20. That was the year before John Hancock Financial Services stepped up to fund the elites and eighteen years after Kathrine Switzer, forced into reverse drag, became the first official female finisher of the Boston Marathon under fraught and ultimately violent circumstances.

Switzer is a charismatic figure who would have succeeded at anything, but she parlayed that 1967 experience into becoming a roving, flame-haired icon to women runners to the present day.

After years of officially treating men and women equally, the race is finally seeking to edge in the general direction of its late-1960s standing. As I mentioned here, the Boston and London marathons are adding a “nonbinary” division in 2023. Chicago offered such a category in its 2022 race, as will New York next month.

A Runner’s World article on September 16 reported that “the BAA’s nonbinary qualifying standard is identical to the women’s for now.” That means that men who can’t make the proper qualifying times still have an option for getting a bib, while women don’t. This in turn means that most of the “nonbinary” qualifiers and virtually all of the top “nonbinary” finishers will be men identifying as an imaginary type of human being. A few will go home and play with penises that have suddenly materialized in their own crotches from nowhere and are demanding as much attention as their owners.

While this situation is unlikely to create a huge influx of “nonbinary” dudes in the years to come, it’s still unfair to women. And if the Boston Athletic Association had announced this move by saying “We’re establishing a policy that favors men ever so slightly in a spots-limited race, but no worries, it’s in the name of fairness,” this wouldn’t have been received so well by the Wokish pundits clapping dutifully for this nonsense.

The RW story focuses mainly on a narcissistic fountain of Critical Theory gibberish named Jake Fedorowski. This is Jake’s stated goal for the running world: “The ultimate goal is an industry that doesn’t classify, or measure success, based on gender identity, but instead affirms all individuals and prioritizes ability. I firmly believe creating a space for non-binary participants is the next step toward that goal.”

Translation, if there even is one: I can’t keep up in the usual way, but I really need to be noticed, so it’s this freak show or no public love at all. It’s impossible to discern anything besides a preening and pathetic need for attention in anything this bozo says. His website is a shrine to his ability to gain media attention for himself.

Around the turn of the century, people who taught or otherwise worked with youngsters were wont to wryly comment on the endless hunger of kids and their parents to make sure everyone was given a trophy for mundane achievements or was otherwise consistently recognized for personal excellence, however contrived or flat-out farcical. The psychologist and author Jonathan Haidt attributes much of this to the increasing tendency of American kids starting in the late 20th century to grow up in subdivisions with their views not being seriously challenged and their well-off parents patting them on the head and saying “You did great” even when they were anything but.

Mix in something no one saw coming even though it was inevitable—social media—and now that those kids are technically adults, they’re acting exactly like those same children, eternally certain that a failure to be told “I LOVE YOU!” amounts to a personal slight. Now that every personal slight has a Twitter group and its own official flag, and the nation is awash in Woke politics and corporations driven by ESG and DEI requirements, these strange, silly, pissy people are getting their way. It would be appropriate to tell them, “Look, I get that you think you’re ‘nonbinary,’ but some people think they’re hobbits and we don’t have checkboxes on race forms for those.”

Well, almost getting their way. The biggest problem with giving these zealots what they want is that the things they want are stupid and destructive, but right behind that is that these people are never, ever satisfied. From RW:

In the meantime, Fedorowski wants organizations to ask themselves: “Are your race announcers using gendered language? Do you have gendered restrooms? Do you have awards for just the women’s and men’s categories? How are you as an event going to follow through with this public commitment you’ve made?”

See? It’s not enough to publicly fawn over these overgrown children by catering to their demand to add a division that completely scuttles registration and the qualifying standards. It’s also awards—I’m sure cash spends nicely in “nonbinary” establishments—and restrooms, and adulation, and MORE MORE MORE for ME. And notice the threats made toward people who don’t “follow through,” that is, cater to every demand from these hapless whack jobs.

I’m glad I never had kids for a host of reasons. But one I never considered is that they might have remained in second-grade mode for their entire confused, pathologically self-centered, and irritating lives. Thankfully, they’re doing this to a sport that functionally died at the professional level years ago and is best treated now as the bucket of off-color jokes it has become.