No women’s gymnast, skater, skier or track and field gold medalist would make the finals in a unisex competition. It’s the same for female golf and tennis players. By and large, the best female athletes in the world wouldn’t even make the national team or qualify for elite national or international competitions. Of the major sports, golf might be the most open to a crossover, and a handful of women have played in men’s events. None have ever come close to winning anything. And plenty of them practice and scrimmage against the men, because you improve by playing someone better than yourself. If you’re at the top of the women’s game, you seek out men for practice — and accept getting smoked if a scrimmage or practice session turns serious.
This doesn’t stop most of us from cheering for the American women against all them furriners.
Sugar Ray Leonard was arguably a better boxer than Cassius Clay and Joe Frasier, back when they were in their Olympic glory days and proud to wave the U.S. flag from the medal stand. (Joe and Sugar Ray never wavered on that.) But Sugar Ray would have been lucky to survive two rounds with the other two.
At elite levels, the overlap between the top male and female performers is zero. In youth sports, the girls hang in with the boys until puberty sets in. Then the differentiation is very rapid. Does this mean girls shouldn’t play sports? No. It means we should accept class based competitions. And let women’s teams find their own level in terms of fanbase, league structure and tv contracts. At the college and professional levels, all sports are luxury entertainment products competing for people’s leisure time and entertainment dollars. It’s all about ticket sales and viewship on tv.
If the women can find an audience and build a fanbase, there’s no reason they can’t succeed. Women’s golf and tennis already have. Prior to Megan Rapinoe poisoning the well, the USWNT was America’s Team, with the soccer princess thing going big time. I always thought women’s professional soccer would be the first women’s team sport to break through. I still do, if they can stay focused on building it the right way, not getting greedy, and keeping political grandstanding out of it.
A lot of that comes down to how one spends their money and time. I don't watch a lot women's sports, but watch a bit of the bigger events in golf and tennis, As far as women's golf goes, there is a solid base of potential viewers. I see women golfers on the course all the time. Where I live, tennis is pretty much dead. About half the courts have been converted to pickleball courts and it is dead after a couple of good years.