Spate of wins by transgender women in US college swimming prompts warnings women’s sport is at risk

A spate of wins by trans women in elite US college swimming prompts outrage among parents and calls for the sport’s governing body to clarify the rules.

Trans US swimmer Iszac Henig. Picture: Instagram

A spate of wins by transgender women in elite US college swimming has prompted top female athletes and women’s groups to warn the Biden administration, which has granted men who’ve artificially become women the same rights to compete as biological women, it will destroy women’s sport altogether.

The victory of 20-year-old Yale swimmer Iszac Henig, a female transitioning to be male, over Pennsylvania University’s Lia Thomas, a male who has transitioned to be female, in a women’s inter-college swimming race last week prompted outrage among parents and calls for the sport’s governing body, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, to clarify the rules.

Yale swimmer Iszac Henig.

“Everything is messed up. I can’t wrap my head around this. The NCAA needs to do something about this. They need to put science into the decision and discussion,” a Pennsylvania parent said after the race.

Cynthia Monteleone, 46, a mature age athlete who competed against biological males in 2018 and 2019 world championship track events, told The Australian the trend was the beginning of the end for women’s sport.

“No words can convey what it felt like spending hours away from my family, being in tears on the track because was so hard, only to show up with someone who is biological advantage,” she said in an interview.

“The mainstream media doesn’t tend to report these stories because they don’t want to, but there’s no getting around Lia Thomas – it’s too big a story,” she told The Australian.

Ms Thomas, 22, who had been on the university’s male swim team until coming out as transgender in 2019, shot to national prominence last year after smashing a series of women’s swimming records, prompting her female teammates to consider a boycott in December last year.

California native Henig, who wrote publicly about transitioning to becoming a man in the New York Times last year, has had his breasts removed, but he hadn’t yet begun hormone treatment to qualify as a male swimmer.

University of Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas.

Swimmer Lia Thomas (pictured before transition).

Thomas, meanwhile, qualified as a woman because she had undergone more than a year of testosterone suppressant treatment.

Jennifer Braceras, director of independent Women’s Law Centre in Washington, said biological women were in effect being asked to “step aside”.

“Sadly, many of the young women who have been pushed aside feel pressure to stay silent,” she told The Australian.

The NCAA stated repeatedly throughout 2021 that it “firmly and unequivocally” supported transgender athletes, amid a growing backlash across the US that’s prompted at least 10 states to ban transgender women from women and girls sport.

The Ivy League, the group of elite US universities overseeing the controversial swimming competition, last week “reaffirmed its unwavering commitment to providing an inclusive environment for all student-athletes while condemning transphobia and discrimination in any form”.

Monteleone, who is in training for the world masters athletic championships in Finland this year, said her 16 year old daughter Margaret, recently came second to a trans female who had only started training two weeks before the high school race.

“Her teammates were crying because one of them said to me why should I even try to train for the championships ships when we all know who is going to win,” she said.

USA Powerlifting courted controversy in 2020 after banning transgender women from competing in the women’s division.

In June last year the Biden administration extended the protection of Title 9, a 1972 civil rights law that prohibited sex-based discrimination in schools including in sport, to transgender students, foreshadowing a more detailed policy to be released in April this year.

Monteleone said “mediocre male” athletes, unlike former gold medal winning decathlete Caitlyn, formerly Bruce, Jenner, had an incentive to transition to women’s divisions.

“You’ll see more male athletes do it; there’s a lot of money and notoriety that comes with winning,” she said.

A US government study published in 2019 found 1.8 per cent of high school students identified as transgender, based on a 2017 survey, three times as great a share as those who identified as transgender among all US adults, according to a separate Gallup poll published in February last year.