The heritability of a trait is generally considered an estimation of the importance of genetic factors to that trait. For example, the heritability of athletic status (regardless of sport) is estimated to be 66% (4). Height, which is critical for success in some sports, is highly heritable, with about 80% of the variation due to genetic factors (5). Body type (having mesomorphic or ectomorphic somatotype) is also highly heritable (6). These somatotypes are classically associated with power or endurance athlete status, respectively (7).
Costa et al. (8) recently reviewed the existing family and twin studies related to specific endurance and muscular strength phenotypes. Aerobic endurance, as reflected by VO2max has a heritability of about 50% (9). Heritability estimates for muscular strength, and power range from 30 to 83%, depending on the specific muscle and type of contraction (8).
As a personal opinion, the reason why sport is split on gender is because of the spectators. You get more women to watch sport if you have a women sport team. You do not get more short people to watch sport by splitting the teams based on height. Thus we split on gender. It has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with money.
Two studies: https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/traits/athleticperformance and https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3993978/
The heritability of a trait is generally considered an estimation of the importance of genetic factors to that trait. For example, the heritability of athletic status (regardless of sport) is estimated to be 66% (4). Height, which is critical for success in some sports, is highly heritable, with about 80% of the variation due to genetic factors (5). Body type (having mesomorphic or ectomorphic somatotype) is also highly heritable (6). These somatotypes are classically associated with power or endurance athlete status, respectively (7).
Costa et al. (8) recently reviewed the existing family and twin studies related to specific endurance and muscular strength phenotypes. Aerobic endurance, as reflected by VO2max has a heritability of about 50% (9). Heritability estimates for muscular strength, and power range from 30 to 83%, depending on the specific muscle and type of contraction (8).
As a personal opinion, the reason why sport is split on gender is because of the spectators. You get more women to watch sport if you have a women sport team. You do not get more short people to watch sport by splitting the teams based on height. Thus we split on gender. It has nothing to do with fairness and everything to do with money.