Swimming’s governing body bans trans athletes from elite women’s races

But there have been concerns over whether athletes who have gone through male puberty “retain an advantage from going through male puberty that is not addressed by lowering testosterone”. Sports scientist Ross Tucker, who was a consultant on World Rugby’s transgender policy, said in The Telegraph: “Biological differences between males and females largely persist, even after a period of testosterone reduction, and this biology has significant implications for performance.”

‘Sport by definition is exclusionary’

Former British Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, who has argued against transgender participation in women’s elite swimming, told BBC Sport she was “really proud of Fina”.

She said: “Sport by definition is exclusionary – we don’t have 15-year-old boys racing in the under-12s, we don’t have heavyweight boxers in with the bantamweights, the whole reason we have lots of different classes in the Paralympics is so that we can create fair opportunities for everybody.”

Davies said “the only people who were going to be losing out were females – they were losing their right to fair sport”.

‘Harmful, unscientific’

But LGBTQ advocacy groups have criticised the decision. Athlete Ally, which organised a letter of support for Thomas in February, called the new policy “discriminatory, harmful, unscientific” and not in line with guidelines set by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). 

Current IOC guidelines state that there should be no presumption that trans women have an automatic advantage over natal women, and leaves individual sports to decide their own eligibility criteria for athletes.

Joanna Harper, a transgender sports scientist who has advised the IOC, told Newsnight in May that “the question isn’t, do trans women have advantages, but can trans women and cis-gender women compete against one another in meaningful competition?” She said that the answer “isn’t definitive in all sports” and that the scientific research in this area was “in its infancy”. 

‘Manufactured crisis’

Fallon Fox, a transgender former mixed martial artist, called Fina’s decision a “knee-jerk reaction” to a “manufactured crisis in swimming”, and argued that there was little proof that transgender athletes threaten to dominate women’s sports.

She told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that if you “field test the hypothesis that transgender women have an unfair advantage” it becomes clear that “transgender women barely register as winning competitors”. Fox said: “People can only point to one national champion whose times are not good enough to allow her into the Olympics.”

Article source: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/sport/957126/swimmings-world-governing-body-bans-trans-athletes-from-elite-races