Sport: The Weaker Sex? Hah!

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Women playing lacrosse? Hockey? Women tackling each other in rugby and mixing it up in the scrum? Women running marathons? Small wonder that fathers, husbands and friends worry about the physical strains that the supposedly weaker sex is undergoing these days. Relax, fellas: there is little to be concerned about. Women are well suited to take part in rugged athletics. Indeed, women hold many long-distance swimming records for both sexes and have run men into the ground during ultramarathon races 50 miles long. Says Dr. Joan Ullyot, a physiologist at San Francisco's Institute of Health Research and a world-class marathoner herself: "The evidence suggests that women are tougher than men."

Nature certainly designed women better than men for sport in one basic way. "A man's scrotum is much more vulnerable than a woman's ovaries," says Dr. John Marshall, director of sports medicine at Manhattan's Hospital for Special Surgery and the trainer for Billie Jean King. "A woman's ovaries sit inside a great big sac of fluid—beautifully protected." A woman's breasts are also not easily damaged. Scotching an old myth, Marshall says: "There's no evidence that trauma to the breasts is a precursor of cancer."

Such injuries as girls and women do suffer can often be blamed on improper condition or coaching. Girls are more loose-jointed than boys, making them somewhat more susceptible to injuries like dislocated shoulders. Women can also have problems with what is known as the "overload phenomenon"—putting too much force on a muscle, tendon or ligament. But that can be avoided with proper training. Says Dr. C. Harmon Brown, director of Student Health Services at California State University in Hayward: "Four years ago it was not O.K. for girls to participate in sports, and they were forced to be sedentary. Now it's suddenly O.K., but teachers are not equipped to show girls how to gradually improve their physical fitness and cut down on injuries."

A girl's training need not be less vigorous than a boy's. Dr. Barbara Drinkwater, a research physiologist at the University of California's Institute of Environmental Stress, found that prepubertal girls are precisely the same as boys in cardio-respiratory (heart-lung) endurance capacity. Parents who worry about their young daughters overtaxing tender hearts while turning a fast 440 should realize that the human machine is designed to shut down —through leg cramps, side stitches, and dizziness—if the strain is too severe.

Then there is the canard that a woman's menstrual cycle inhibits peak performance. World and Olympic records, however, have been set by women who were having their periods. Nor does exertion disrupt the cycle for most women athletes. Says one world-class runner: "I'm so regular, it's ridiculous." However, some women undergoing hard training do stop menstruating for months at a time. This cessation of the cycle, called amenorrhea, occurs in about 45% of women who run over 65 miles a week—as well as in dancers, ice skaters and gymnasts. Many experts link amenorrhea directly to loss of body fat, a result of exercise. A cutback in training, with subsequent weight gain, generally restores the normal cycle.