Picture witnessing the mixed 4x400m relay at the Paris track, examining the split times, and realizing that the women on most of the final teams outperformed the men.
Or envision watching the mixed medley relay in the pool, where teams allocate two women and two men for the strokes of their choice, and observe women overtaking men during the butterfly segment.
Imagine also tuning in to the first medal event of the Paris Olympics, the mixed team air rifle shooting, where women achieved higher scores than men on eight out of the top ten teams.
You don’t need to imagine this last scenario because it actually happened on Saturday during the first medal event of the Olympics. In qualification, only Kazakhstan and Mexico made it to the top 10 with their male competitors achieving better scores than their female counterparts. Kazakhstan’s male shooter, Islam Satpayev, led with the highest score, but the next five highest scores were from women. At the other end, all six of the lowest scores were posted by men.
Satpayev’s performance dipped slightly in the bronze-medal match, yet teammate Alexandra Le closely matched his shooting, helping Kazakhstan secure a spot on the podium. In the gold-medal match, 17-year-old Huang Yuting was the standout performer as she and her partner, 19-year-old Sheng Lihao, successfully defended against South Korea.
This result isn’t a mere coincidence. Researchers analyzed outcomes from the Tokyo Olympics and discovered almost no difference between male and female competitors in air rifle contests, while men performed slightly better in air pistol, trap, and skeet disciplines.
The International Shooting Sport Federation has recognized this in its transgender policy: “While ISSF aims to maintain two separate categories for men and women, evidence from competitions indicates that male and female athletes often achieve similar scores. Therefore, the protection of the women’s category isn’t necessarily required for fairness purposes.”
Women first participated in Olympic shooting at open (mixed-gender) events in 1968. In 1976, Margaret Murdock tied for first place in the three-position rifle with Lanny Bassham; although a review gave the gold to Bassham, he insisted on sharing the podium with Murdock, stating years later that she deserved a gold medal.
However, only a few women took part in the open events in 1976 and 1980. Beginning in 1984, the Olympics gradually introduced women’s events, yet it wasn’t until 1992 that one woman, China’s Shan Zhang, secured a medal in an open event for skeet. It wasn’t until 2000 that skeet and trap competitions added women’s-only categories. Currently, men and women compete exclusively in mixed team formats.
In contrast, at American universities, men and women compete alongside each other in shooting events, leading to shared histories. Mary Tucker, a silver medalist in the mixed team air rifle in Tokyo, stood on the medal podium with her former college teammate, Tokyo gold medalist Will Shaner from Kentucky and with Alaska-Fairbanks shooter Rylan Kissell, her partner in the mixed air rifle at Paris.
Some argue that the question of whether women need separate events versus whether they should have them reflects two different perspectives. This debate is reminiscent of discussions surrounding competitive fields primarily focused on mental skill rather than physical strength, like chess and poker.
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“Despite women’s success in open events, girls’ and women’s chess events are incredibly important as they help to correct historical gender imbalances,” comments Jennifer Shahade, a distinguished poker player and first female winner of the US Junior Open in chess, as well as a two-time US women’s chess champion who chronicled the history of women in chess in her book, Chess Queens. The world chess championship is considered “open” rather than “men’s” because women like Judit Polgar have entered the competition and occasionally triumphed over top male players.
In the Olympics, athletes would hesitate to merge a men’s event with a women’s event if it resulted in one less event in their sport. However, Olympic shooting is a condensed version of what is contested at world championships, where many additional categories exist. Perhaps gender integration in air rifle could pave the way for the reinstatement of a shooting event that has been dropped from the Olympics, such as prone rifle or an event held at longer distances (the return of the 100m running deer seems highly unlikely).
Women’s results also occasionally match or exceed those of men in other sports. For instance, archery, akin to shooting, features a mixed team format where both male and female scores are combined, with consistent distances (70m) and target sizes (122cm, with a 12.2cm ring worth 10 points) for both genders. While men tend to score higher, women’s world record-holder Lim Si-hyeon achieved a score of 694 in the Olympic ranking round on Thursday, surpassing the top men’s score of 686. (The current men’s world record is held by US archer Brady Ellison at 702.) In these ranking rounds, the 64 male competitors averaged 658.9 points, while women averaged 646.8. (Using medians, the men’s median score was 662; the women’s median score was 649.5.)
As it stands, equestrian is the only competition where women face men directly in individual events instead of teams. Whether shooting will become the next sport to feature direct competition between men and women as individuals remains uncertain. Yet, among all the sports currently in the Olympic program, shooting appears to have the highest potential for such a development.
