There are very few sports in which men and women compete on equal terms. It’s a necessary shame, based largely on genes and hormones (as the unfortunate Caster Semenya discovered). We saw why this week, at the World Athletics Championships in sweaty Doha, when male and female athletes combined forces in the 4 x 400m relay for the first time. Most teams in the final chose an alternate gender order: woman, man, woman, man. All except the plucky Poles, whose male runners set a hefty lead, which was maintained until the last leg, when four men swept past Justyna Swiety-Ersetic as she bravely tried to hang on. It was exciting and dispiriting in equal measure.
The tables should be turned at Longchamp this weekend, when Enable, a five-year-old filly, is the favourite to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Europe’s richest horse race. It won’t be a flash in the pan: Enable has won the last two Arcs, and all but one of her 14 races, netting her owner, Khaled Abdullah a handy £9,338,144 in prize money. She is probably the fastest horse over a mile and a half on the planet right now.
Across the equestrian world, women are equal to – and frequently better than – men. Look at Charlotte Dujardin, the queen of dressage, or, in the sphere of eventing, which requires bravery, guile and technique, at Badminton winner Piggy French, World Champion Rosalind Canter and European Champion Ingrid Klimke.
There is no gender bias, of course, in the game of news prediction. Those of you who have faithfully followed Nostadamus for the last six months should have been able to foresee that you would get another shot at it. We’re still working on a bit of shape-shifting. It should come soon. But in the meantime, good luck with this week’s next week’s news quiz – whatever your gender.
Here are last week’s answers:
- No. The All Blacks beat the Springboks 23-13.
- No, a few thousand alien hunters (and quite a few journalists) made it to the desert, but no one tried to storm the Area 51.
- No. The supreme court deemed Boris’s prorogation of parliament to be unlawful.
- No, Sandra Oh was beaten to the lead actress Emmy by Michelle WIlliams.
- No, The Europeans beat the ROW to win the Laver Cup by 13-11.
- No, Pedro Sanchez failed to form a coalition government and is now campaigning to be elected president in the November election.
- Don’t know. It seems that the divorce statistics for 2018 were so complicated that the Office of National Statistics delayed their release (or maybe they were too busy with Brexit-related matters).
- No. Dubai crude oil was trading at $62.59 on September 23rd, but dipped below $60/barrel four days later.
- Yes. Ad Astra narrowly beat Rambo in box office takings, but both were mightily eclipsed by the finery of Downton Abbey which lorded it at the top of the movie charts.
- No. Too few of you contacted me to talk about the future. The door to my cyber-cave, however, is always open. Please email: samantha@tortoisemedia.com.
