When it comes to physical strength and a variety of other physical factors, there is really no doubt that, on average, men are stronger than women.

When you take it to the top end of the spectrum, men outperform women even more.

This is the reason why it is necessary to have men’s leagues and women’s leagues in sports. While there are some incredibly talented women professional athletes, and they are improving constantly, it is unlikely that women would ever be able to successfully compete in, for example, the NBA.

The physical differences are just too great to overcome, and that isn’t likely to change.

Then again, that claim may be wrong.

If you asked the average person today whether women could compete with men in the most physically demanding sports on the planet, most people would laugh and say no.The fact is, however, that when it comes to these extreme sports, women are not just shrinking the gap in performance, but in some cases, surpassing men.

A new study published in the Frontiers of Physiology looked at the way men and women expend energy in long-distance skiing, and the results may surprise you. The team of researchers from the Universities of Wisconsin and Montana looked at athletes competing in the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Ski Classic (AMWSC).

This is an event where competitors need to complete a course that is between 160 and 289 kilometers (100-180 miles) depending on the year. They studied eight females and 12 males who competed in this grueling event. While this event is not officially a race since there are no awards for coming in first, participants do push themselves to complete as fast as possible.

The average male participant finished the course in 7.5 days compared to the average female, who took 8.1 days.

Where it gets surprising (to some) is when looking at the top performers of the event. Here, men and women had very similar times. The study found that the women athletes actually expended less energy during the event.

They also found that they had a reduced energy expenditure to load ratio.

This means that they burned less energy per kilogram that they were carrying (which included their body weight, clothes, food, camping gear, etc). To put it simply, the female body operates more efficiently than the male.The researchers say that this was, at least in part, due to the extremely cold temperatures, which cause the resting metabolic rate to rise.

Beyond just the actual study, one can look to historical extreme sporting events to see that women are much more competitive with men than most people think. In some cases, women actually surpass them.

In 1985, for example, Libby Riddles famously beat all the men in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Granted, the dogs do a lot of the work, but anyone who tries to argue that this race is not physically demanding on the human simply doesn’t understand the sport of dog sled racing. This wasn’t just a fluke either; another woman, Susan Butcher, won four out of the next five of these races (she likely only lost the one because a moose killed two of her dogs). In 1986, she broke the course record.

There are many other examples where, when the sport gets to the ultra extreme levels, women are not just competitive, but actually outperform most (if not all) men. It is important to note that they are doing this even though there are far fewer female athletes, and young girls are not pushed to play sports the same way many young men are.

While it is impossible to measure at this point, in a world where young girls were pushed to sports the same as young boys, it is very possible that the ultra extreme sporting events would all be dominated by women.

So, if someone ever tries to say that women can’t compete with top men in sports, simply point them to the most difficult sporting events on the planet to prove them wrong.

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