But the option DOES come in to play. If the motor glider is successful in hooking that thermal in non-landable terrain, the record is claimed. In general records are not claimed if the glider got low, and no records are claimed where the engine was required to start on course. The concept of there being recordable data of the unsuccessful attempts is just not valid.

I am NOT saying that one group is inferior to another, which is why I said the logic stands that if we are going to collapse the record list we should get rid of these classes too because there is no measurable difference between a male, female, or junior pilot in terms of capability, performance, or handicap. But we choose to keep these records as they are instead of taking away opportunities to set a diverse variety of records.

Other sports do have age group records such as weightlifting. I would not expect an 80+ year old weightlifter to compete for records against the 22 year old Olympic Record holder. But maybe there is no measurable difference for that to matter either since the older lifter has had longer to train or some other obscure logic that one comes up with.

We can try to rationalize some outlandish equivalency between motor gliders and real gliders, or we can just agree that the system should be (have been) left alone with separate classes for the two. Motor gliders deserve to hold records too, but in their own class. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it". The system wasn't broken until they went and added this ridiculous modification.