Swimming transgender comment: FINA’s decision an indictment on other sports not addressing trans issue

The heat is coming on “spineless” sporting officials who dodge decision-making after FINA’s historic call on transgender swimmers, writes Julian Linden.

FINA’S decision to ban transgender athletes from competing in elite women’s events while extending an olive branch that allows everyone to swim ranks among the most important decisions in sporting history.

Make no mistake about it, this is a momentous announcement that will change world sports forever — perhaps not straight away, but eventually.

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Since Adam and Eve chased each other around the Garden of Eden, sports have been split into two categories; for males and females, but thanks to FINA, that’s now about to change.

You can bank that other sports will now follow suit, happy to follow FINA through the wall after swimming’s leaders have copped it for going first.

FINA’s decision to implement an “open category” for athletes who don’t neatly fit into the traditional gender categories, is undoubtedly a feel-good solution to the most complex issue sport has grappled with for years.

Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, will be barred from competing in FINA women’s events. Picture: Kathryn Riley/Getty Images

The decision to keep women’s sport for women by banning transgender athletes is the real story though because it’s a rare victory for commonsense in a world that’s gone mad.

It’s also a wake up call for all the other gutless sports officials who are still sitting on their hands.

The blazers all love to preach about how they put athlete interests first but they almost always go running for cover when the tough calls need to be made.

There was no more pathetic sight than the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach flying to Budapest to address the FINA Congress with a rambling speech that almost put everyone to sleep then scurrying out of the building before the transgender vote took place.

It was another sad reminder that one of the most important men in world sport — who was involved in a cynical photo opportunity with Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai — often goes MIA when it comes to crucial athlete decisions.

Swimming’s world governing body deserves plenty of credit for taking the plunge and being the first international sport to tackle the transgender issue front on.

University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas. Picture: Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

But that’s a horrible indictment on other sports who have done nothing because athletes deserve better.

FINA isn’t exactly a beacon of how a sport should be run.

It’s long been one of the most corrupt and male chauvinistic sporting organisations on the planet and has only recently started to introduce meaningful reform after most of the cronies who lived off the earnings of the swimmers have gone and their dirty dealing were exposed.

It doesn’t say a lot about other sports, who have seen the transgender storm coming for years but have just battened down the hatches in the hope it would pass over.

It isn’t going away but the spineless officials who won’t make the tough calls should be because the game is up.

Cate Campbell put them all to shame with her inspiring speech to the FINA Congress.

This is a woman who has not only stood on the blocks in her green and gold cozzies and given everything she has for Australia but she has also stood up for what she believes in.

She has been one of FINA’s biggest critics — unafraid to call them out when they get it wrong — but when she was asked to put her neck on the line and address the Congress she stepped up to the plate.

She’s won so many medals that she’s an immortal of the sport, but this could be her greatest legacy.