page_title: Mixed-sex sports
section_title: Mixed doubles or pairs
hierarchical_section_title: Mixed-sex sports / Mixed doubles or pairs
caption_attribution_description: English: Mixed duet free final. 17th FINA World Championships Budapest / Budapest 2017 FINA Vizes Világbajnokság. Taken on Saturday, the 22nd of July, 2017. Városliget (City Park), Budapest, Hungary, Central Europe.
context_page_description: Mixed-sex sports are individual and team sports whose participants are not of a single sex. In organised sports settings, rules usually dictate an equal number of people of each sex in a team. Usually, the main purpose of these rules are to account for physiological sex differences. Mixed-sex sports in informal settings are typically groups of neighbours, friends or family playing without regard to the sex of the participants. Mixed-sex play is also common in children's sports — before puberty and adolescence, sport-relevant sex differences affect performance far less.
  There are multiple dynamics to mixed-sex sports. Where sex differences in human physiology do not play a significant role in a person's proficiency in a sport, then men and women may compete in a single open class, as in equestrian sports. When sex is a major factor in a competitor's performance, sports will typically split men and women into separate divisions, but there may be mixed-sex team variants, such as mixed doubles. In artistic judged sports, these physical differences play a key role in performances, as demonstrated in pair figure skating and acrobatic gymnastics.
context_section_description: A common form of mixed-sex event is for pairs of one male and one female.
  Sports based on dancing usually have male/female pairings, such as ice dancing, pair figure skating, ballroom dancing and synchronised swimming duets. In these sports/events, the male and female participants physically work together (often to music) to jointly produce an artistic athletic performance.
  Mixed doubles are events where two mixed-sex pairs directly compete (that is, all four competitors are in open play as two teams). This is particularly found in racket sports (which rarely have larger teams), including tennis, table tennis, badminton, squash and racquetball.
  Mixed pairs and mixed team events are occasionally organised in contract bridge.
  Pairs may also compete in turn-based games: one format (out of many) alternates the woman and man of each pair just as the competing sides alternate, so each round has four turns of individual action. Well-suited to strategy-based sports (such as mixed doubles curling, mixed golf, mixed bowling, mixed team darts) where players can beneficially undertake mental planning or assessment while waiting for their turn. Separate male and female performances may also be scored then added to produce mixed team results in such sports as diving. Synchronised diving is also found in mixed-sex format. In professional wrestling, mixed tag team matches do not explicitly alternate in a turn-based manner but each wrestler only faces their opponent of the same sex (switching occurs at players′ discretion).
caption: A mixed-sex pair, participating in FINA World Championships of synchronised swimming, waves to the crowd before diving into water.
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