Will female swimmers ever win Olympic Gold again? Thomas aims for top…

I wonder what gender many of these athletes will be a few years after they retire?

And now men want to take it all away from us as we are obviously doing too well!

Not really because we are doing too well, but rather that they can maybe profit too. Professional sportswomen can now make a living doing their sport, so it is perhaps unsurprising that we are now seeing male athletes who identify as women appearing in women's teams in football, cycling and volleyball etc.

How hard have women had to work to even get their sporty taken seriously! We couldn’t run a marathon until 1983 as it was felt our insides would fall out. Women’s football teams are only just getting decent sponsorship. And now men want to take it all away from us as we are obviously doing too well!

I don’t want to detail the discussion but was wondering about something related: when a trans woman joins a woman’s team and would thereby give that team an advantage.

This was having just seen the Addidas advertisement about becoming the impossible, featuring various remarkable women but which which also includes the words, “Compete as a trans woman” and shows Tiffany Abreu, who is a trans woman volley ball player.
www.thedrum.com/news/2022/02/18/ad-the-day-adidas-film-encourages-turning-your-impossible-i-mpossible

Someone also (it may have been Ross Tucker) made the point that the intent doesn't matter. (When people say 'why would someone go to the trouble of transitioning to win?')
The simple fact of their sexed body (male) gives them an unfair advantage in a female race.

If a competitor had unknowingly been slipped a drug in their drink before racing they would still be banned from the race - because of the obvious fact of the advantage the drug gave them. Whether they intended to ingest it or not is irrelevant.

So easy to minimise your effort if there is nothing to be won and everything to lose if you perform too well! Just look at Lia's performance against the Harvard transman swimmer, when no points were at stake, such a "surprising" dip in Lia's times!

Or unless like Emily Bridges a series of accidents puts paid to their pole position as a distinct possibility for a medal in Paris so they fast forward the transition they had previously been happy to delay until after Paris to grab the possibility of a medal as a transwoman.

With Thomas everyone is starting to see the relative lack of effort needed to win the races. WIth Bridges we see an interesting story being played out in the media. In 2020 there was this article www.skysports.com/more-sports/cycling/news/15264/12101251/emily-bridges-coming-out-as-trans-in-cycling-is-a-crucial-step-on-my-journey with this quote

"To help achieve this, I'm going to be part of research into the effect that a medical transition has on athletic performance. This will, as far as I'm aware, be the first time that an elite-level international athlete has done this. I understand this will be extremely useful research. I really want to demonstrate what effect hormone replacement therapy has on the body, and how it massively changes athletic performance in multiple ways.I know that people will have questions about fairness. I feel I have an opportunity to show that the existing eligibility rules for trans athletes in competition are appropriate."
(my bold)

Just last week there was this article informing the cycling world that Bridges will be in the women's races soon, but it's fair because look - there's a graph (n=1) showing a dramatic drop in performance! www.cyclingweekly.com/fitness/i-just-want-to-be-competitive-again-trans-cyclist-emily-bridges-on-preparing-to-race-in-the-female-category with these quotes:

"the sharp shock of taking part in the elite men’s crit at the Loughborough Cycling Festival at the end of May last year. “I was shelled after two laps and lapped four times,” she shakes her head, reliving the unfamiliar feeling of being resigned to defeat. Bridges finished 43rd out of 45."

"She may have gone from frontrunner to tail-ender in the course of just a few months,"

"Bridges has been participating in a study at Loughborough University to monitor these changes, as well as tracking her own data (see chart) – indicating a 13-16% drop in her power outputs across six-second, one-, five- and 20-minute durations. In light of these changes, is she content that the current rules are appropriate? “I think so, yes. The reduced testosterone has a direct effect on the main determinants of VO2max – red blood cells, haemoglobin, haematocrit – which drop to female levels within five months."

So power output has dropped by 13-16% - interestingly right in the 9-24% range of advantage of males over females in cycling events cited by Hilton and Lundberg pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33289906/.

How does that square with qualifying 4th out of 20 for the men's individual pursuit, and 4th overall (just out of the medal positions)?

How does that square with winning bronze in the men's team pursuit?

How does that square with winning gold in the men's points race?

All at this event www.bucs.org.uk/events-page/cycling-track-championships-2021-22.html?tab=Results+and+Programme

[quote 334bu]www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/asterisk-needed-symbol-would-define-lia-thomas-unfair-advantage-at-ncaa-championships/[/quote]
That was a great read. How big is this magazine in the swimming world?

How many trans women will it take to also compete along side Thomas et al for them to realise this plan may have backfired.

It will be interesting to see what happens at and after the NCAA swim meet in a few weeks.

Pity every single spectator in that stadium doesn't turn their backs and stand there in silence when a blatant cheat gets up on the podium. I would. Boils my blood.

#NoThankYou

Always a good idea to have a back up plan.

And Thomas is working on it... from the bottom levels up, sights set on Olympic gold.

Collegiate records - check
Nationals - next round of competition!

Have you not thought about the women that a single male competitor ousts from a sport? It isn't just 1 for 1. But then, you've been on the same threads as I have. You've seen those facts! You have always seen and dismissed those facts!

The former member of the Kardashian clan added that she has an advantage over other women golfers because she has longer arms, is 6’1″ and can outdrive them by 100 yards.

“Even being off testosterone and on oestrogen for seven years now, what I’ve got left over is still more than they’ve ever had. So, it wouldn’t be fair.”

Does DoM disagree with Jenner's experience as an all-round athlete and as a transwoman?

www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/news/asterisk-needed-symbol-would-define-lia-thomas-unfair-advantage-at-ncaa-championships/

Sorry Natalie Van Gogh not Virginia.

Even beginner male athletes can have a profitable "female" career. Virginia Van Gogh started cycling after transition and became a professional cyclist at the age of 37! Retired aged 47. Wonder how many menopausal women are competing on the European Professional Cycling circuit?

It’s not even about transitioning. Lia Thomas has all their tackle. And some activists campaign for the right to compete if you feel like a woman. So in theory a man could “feel” female for a race and then be back to full-on blokedom by the time he’s changed out of his swimsuit (in the women’s changing room….).

There's a sort of point there in that a "very good" athlete - someone really at top level in the sport - is unlikely to want to endanger that with transition. Why complicate things? So I think we won't ever see someone like Phelps or Federer transitioning, or even a top-level national athlete.

No, they'll wait until they've cemented their achievements, like Jenner, before risking anything. It's only those that won't achieve the highest success by fair means, who will try to achieve it by cheating.

Lia Thomas was ranked 462. not particularly competitive.

You're right, Thomas is only "half decent" rather than "very good".

There's a sort of point there in that a "very good" athlete - someone really at top level in the sport - is unlikely to want to endanger that with transition. Why complicate things? So I think we won't ever see someone like Phelps or Federer transitioning, or even a top-level national athlete.

And it's true that it's not as simple as someone transitioning "simply to win at sports".

But there is clearly a pattern emerging of a "second career". When a man finds they are not quite where they want to be, or their performance is fading with age, then they have a potential path open to them. If they were in any way minded to transition, then it's a case of "what do I have to lose?"

If they do transition they not only get whatever they're looking for from the transition itself, they can have a second sports career into their 40s against 20-something women, or just boost their initial career to where they wish it had been. Win-win.

In Thomas's case he simply wasn't at the top of his sport - I believe he was at the performance level of "able to compete, but not making it into his college's long-distance relay team". Maybe it was a hard, unrewarding grind. But now he can win any event he likes, easily. It's fun again.

And this whole option is only open to men of course. Women don't get a second sports career. It's hard enough to do the first one, even without the men in the event.

Just in case anyone hasn't seen a mixed relay event, here is the Olympic event. The difference between the men and women is quite staggering.