The Olympic Spirit

Sometimes life is cruel but often it dishes up what you actually deserve.

We see that in all manner of competition: business, sporting and personal. You can work really hard and still not achieve a specific goal. However, the passage of time and some perspective usually lets you understand why.

Now spare a thought for our Olympic athletes.

They've spent years pursuing excellence in their chosen event only for catastrophe to strike. One of our cyclists had his bike fall apart during competition. A bad bit of refereeing denied a chance at gold for the Matildas.

There was even a case of a wannabe female Olympian denied a berth because she was competing against a biological male. Personally I think it is unfair and if this trend continues then it will be very hard to maintain women's sport.

Let's get past the battle of the sexes garbage and accept that men are generally stronger and faster than women.

The evidence is there in most every Olympic sport and probably explains why we don't have biological females claiming to be men and wanting to compete in the male division. They wouldn't stand a chance.

That's ok to acknowledge without triggering illogical and unhinged ranting.

So why should a person, who has spent decades developing as a male and training as a male, suddenly be able to declare themselves female and compete against women?

It simply isn't fair.

Now in the case of this weightlifter, he/she had a terrible meet, failing at all three attempts in the snatch. Some will say, because women took all podium places it shows the current system works.

While that's a self-serving argument built around the personal choking of a trans competitor during a meet, it fails to uphold the main principle and the general rule of male advantage in contests of speed and strength.

And no, that doesn't mean I can beat an Olympic female runner just because I am a bloke. It means that when you have the best of the best competing, the likely winner will be the male.

Frankly, that should be easy for most people to accept and it's right that we have developed sporting contests around it - men's, women's and mixed. Now there are calls for a trans sports category for the tiny group of people who think they are trapped in the wrong biological body.

I'm sure if the commercial market is there it will probably happen but we shouldn't diminish the Olympic ideal to cater to an increasingly niche identity industry, all in the name of equality.

The Olympics aren't about equality. They are about the spirit of fair competition in the pursuit to be the best and to do your very best.

We shouldn't allow gender ideology to take that away from our athletes.