Originally Posted by
canuckbelle
Based on what?? Why do we need easier gears to avoid injury?
The argument for juniors is that they're also still growing. Women aren't. The analogy fails. What's your argument?
Knee injuries are not that high of a cycling injury anyway, so have to go to other sports to see how female knees hold up.
In soccer women have several times the knee injury of men (ACL normally). And it especially goes up around puberty - once the women stop growing while the males the same age continue to grow and have less knee injuries. At the same time the male is getting more powerful, bigger, faster and putting more ligament stress - and having fewer ligament injuries. Having spent 10 years in girls/women's soccer with a very trained daughter I saw this was a problem beyond just what the sport was causing.
There are hormone and changes that "suggest" injuries may be increased too
BBC NEWS | Health | Menstrual cycle injury risk link
Building on that argument, is that women racing men on bikes is even more stressful than where we get our same gender vs same gender sports injury stats from. The women are as strong as the men. Are their tendons and knees also as strong?