Uneasy Rhetoric

It isn’t a secret, but I’ve never really had the opportunity to write something here about a sport, er, “competition,” I follow closely enough to really “get”: NASCAR. Despite the fact that it is ecologically horrid and more conservative than any other sport, possibly including golf, I like it.

But what’s getting me to post here is this post by Kevin Drum at Political Animal. Apparently, Robby Gordon, a former open-wheel racer turned NASCAR team-owner/driver who has raced “the double” (the Indy 500 and the NASCAR 600 at Charlotte in the same day) says he won’t race Indy anymore unless they handicap the girls.

You see, Danica Patrick, a petite (100 pound) 23 year-old, qualified fourth for the Indianapolis 500. She may have qualified on the pole but she had a wobble on her qualifying run. Gordon argues that she has a distinct advantage because she weighs so much less than the other drivers.

Two words for you Robby Gordon: weight watchers.

As a commenter pointed out on Drum’s post, “If weight was such a factor, the racing teams would have switched to jockeys before now.” Sure, weight can make a difference in the car and moreso in Indy than in heavier stock cars, but so can a number of other factors. Patrick didn’t qualify well because she’s light, she qualified well because she knows what she’s doing. (Even if her weight helps her get a little speed edge, there’s a lot more to racing a car than speed - put me in a professional race in a car that gets 30mph more than everyone else and I’ll still lose.)

Drum sums it up this way:

It’s amazing, isn’t it? Men have dozens of advantages against women in practically every sport on the planet, and earn mountains of money because of it. But find one minor advantage for women in one single sport and the men suddenly start blubbering about how unfair it is. What a bunch of whiners.

We could also point out that auto racing is one of the few “sports” where women and men compete together rather than in separate leagues.

Update: According to this commenter, NASCAR does have a “ballast” rule. Odd then that Indy wouldn’t. Or do they? I wouldn’t put it past Gordon to complain just to get airtime, and here I am, giving him my precious bandwidth.

Update #2: spelling fixed.