The National Collegiate Athletic Association is facing criticism from iconic athletes in women's sports who have decided to speak out against the transgender controversy in competitive swimming. The NCAA had allowed University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male who transitioned and now identifies as a woman, to compete against women. Thomas subsequently broke several women's swimming records.
Now, Olympic gold medal swimmer Nancy Hogshead-Makar is speaking out on the issue, writing an op-ed for the Daily Mail, in which she argued that "there is nothing fair" about Thomas, a biological male, competing against women for UPenn in NCAA swimming.
Hogshead-Makar wrote, "Worse, her domination of the 'women's sports' category is doing nothing to engender greater empathy for inclusive practices throughout society for the trans community."
Hogshead-Makar, who was part of the U.S. National Team for nine years from 1976 to 1984, once competed against East German swimmers who cheated at the Olympics by taking anabolic steroids. When the East Germans boycotted the Olympics after the cheating allegations, Hogshead-Makar was able to win three Olympic gold medals and a silver medal.
The Olympic champ argued trans women should be able to compete against women only if they can "demonstrate that they have lost their sex-linked, male-puberty advantage prior to competition in the women's category." She pointed out that Thomas "cannot make that demonstration" given the records the biological male athlete has broken in women's sports.
Hogshead-Makar called out the NCAA for allowing this to happen, arguing, "The rules should follow the evidence, and in this case it is clear; Thomas should not be in head-to-head competition with biological females."
According to Just the News, several iconic athletes backed up Hogshead-Makar, with former professional tennis player Martina Navratilova taking to Twitter to share a link to the op-ed and add, "A well reasoned and fair take on trans women inclusion in women's sports, IMO. Well done Nancy!"
Former number one tennis player Chris Evert retweeted Natatilova's statement, adding, "I second that." More and more people in sports are coming out to oppose the NCAA's move to allow Thomas to compete in women's sports. Swimming World Magazine editor in chief John Lohn, who admitted that he had been called a "bigot" for decrying Thomas' smashing of women's records, also spoke out in an editorial published on Monday.
"We emphasize that the issue at hand is not about transgenderism," Lohn wrote. "It is about providing an opportunity for thousands of female athletes - in the present and the future - to know they will enter competition with an equal chance for success, not already facing a scenario in which they are overmatched, or in which an opponent's arsenal is far more potent."
While Thomas is enjoying the newfound fame that came with breaking several women's records as a biological male competing against females, female UPenn swimmers and their parents are speaking out about how unfair it was for Thomas to be on the women's team. After being told not to talk about the issue by the team's coach, several women on the team decided to speak to the media to tell the truth about what was really going on within the team.
"Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this," one female-born swimming athlete on the team revealed, adding that their coach Mich Schnur simply did not care about anything else except winning. "I think secretly everyone just knows it's the wrong thing to do."
Meanwhile, parents of some of the female-born athletes in the UPenn team have called upon the NCAA to disallow transgender athletes from competing in women's teams, arguing that "At stake here is the integrity of women's sports."
The NCAA remains stubborn and reiterated instead its "commitment to providing a fair environment for student-athletes" despite the obvious unfairness of having Thomas break several women's swimming records.
