How Unfair are Trans Athletes, really?
(Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“We will not by the way, have men participating in women's sports”
“We will not, have men participating in women's sports.”
“Emma Weyent won that race.”
Since becoming the first openly transgender swimmer to win a Divison I championship, Lia Thomas has been subject to a lot of controversy. Thomas’ success has been met with its fair share of supportive comments, which has not been overshadowed by a plethora of detractions to the swimmers eligibility in the competition.
A range of opinions have emerged from politicians, current competitors, and former olympians on the discussion of whether Thomas should have the right to compete against her peers. Her detractors argue that Lia physically eclipses any and all of her competition before even entering the pool, due to being biologically born as a male. On the other hand, Lia’s supporters point out the importance of the athlete’s participation in hormone replacement therapy (HRT), which sits her comfortably within the NCAA’s guidelines to compete.
Statistically, it gets tricky.
From face value, there is no question that her respective placements improved after transitioning from the men’s competition to the women’s.
Thomas was ranked 65th in the 500-yard freestyle event for Penn’s men’s team. After transitioning, she ranked 1st.
This correlation rings true for her other events as well. 200-yard freestyle—554th to 5th; 1650-yard freestyle—32nd to 8th.
However, statistics without context means next to nothing. Lia Thomas started HRT in May 2019. As a result, Thomas was competing against her male counterparts while on HRT, a variable affecting her overall ranking before her completed transition.
The NCAA’s transgender policy states: “A trans female treated with testosterone suppression medication may continue to compete on a men’s team but may not compete on a women’s team without changing it to a mixed team status until completing one year of testosterone suppression treatment.”
Thomas, who is now nearly three years into HRT, was tasked with competing for one full year against male athletes whilst undergoing treatment.
The season before Lia Thomas underwent HRT, she secured top eight finishes in the 500, 1000, and 1650-yard events at the Ivy League Championships racing for Penn’s men's team.
“Lia was absolutely a standout athlete when she was competing on the men’s team,” said Schuyler Bailar, the first openly trans swimmer in the NCAA. “It is far from abnormal or unlikely for an athlete to go from being ranked 11th to 1st in the span of a few years.”
HRT tends to cause patients to learn to deal with consistent bodily changes. While Lia Thomas competed, she likely had to deal with muscle fatigue, joint pain, and a general weakness throughout the body. HRT directly causes transitioning males in a decrease in muscle tissue and an increase in body fat—opposite physical goals of athletes in any sport.
Lia Thomas also expressed a serious uncomfortability within her own body preceding her transition.
“Being in the early stages of transition, it was a very awkward experience of basically being a woman competing in a men’s meet. It was uncomfortable, so I didn’t compete that much,” said Thomas.
Her transition came in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, where her ability to train in an open pool, much like many other swimmers, became inconsistent and difficult to manage.
Thomas, like many other collegiate swimmers, has seemed to have shown improvement through age in her career. Statistically, Thomas is evidently a very good swimmer, but it's nothing that the women’s side of the sport has never seen before.
If Thomas’s times are compared to the top eight NCAA women’s finishers over the last six years, her times show nothing that could prove that her transition would potentially disrupt the playing field of the sport.
Of the 56 swimmers included in the dataset, her personal bests in each event would rank her: 55th in the 100-yard, 31st in the 200-yard, and 8th in the 500-yard.
Thomas’ progression as an athlete is obvious, but the criticism and knocks on her ability to compete as a result of her skill is absurd. Thomas’ flourishing as an athlete had detractors across the nation ready to pounce on her for her transitioning, claiming that she disrupts the sanctity of women’s swimming.
Despite her impressive times, they don’t seem to be anything that the sport has never seen before. Until then, Thomas should keep swimming as inspiration for transgender athletes and women alike.
