Nicole Cooke speaks out

That's an excellent point, Ginger!

I think sport strips away a lot of the usual trappings of "feminity" as most sports aren't performed in dresses and sports women don't usually have on make up or long styled hair dos. Laurel Hubbard carried DH through an entire mountain range just by a few pictures. As LH looked very... The long hair didn't cut it as DH has longer hair than I do.

Paula Radcliffe on Twitter about an hour ago

“Absolutely serious. The entire premise for women’s sport is to create a fair competition space where women can win, because it physically isn’t possible against men. Open the door for male physiological advantages & potentially every female competing in sport is affected.”

So good.

You can’t think TW are indistinguishable from women once you recognise (as any rational person must) that the participation of males in female sports is unfair. Clearly, they’re not indistinguishable from women.

Sport was the tipping point for my male colleagues several years ago. They were keen footballers and they knew that competing against women would never be fair. They wouldn’t want to do it because the risk of causing harm was too high. It’s just too obviously unequal and dangerous to be on the fence about.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/karen-pickering-i-believe-in-a-protected-female-category-w3clk30gg

Did we see Paula Radcliffe is out and about on this as well?

Sally Gunnell, Radcliffe, Cooke, Davis.

Quite emotional over here. My daughters might actually get to participate in sport without having to defer to cheating males.

Oh, and in snooker, taller men can reach further across the table, and in shooting sports, stronger men can hold a heavier gun that counteracts the recoil better.

Furx. Did wonder about that but naively thought elite athletes would be more equitable

@SallyLockheart.

Nope, the male system responds differently to stress (of making a shot under pressure) and males are less affected by the undesirable effects of adrenaline and are able to hold a steadier aim.

Brilliant article thank you for sharing

boysvswomen.com/#/

It basically compares schoolboy records against women's Olympics records. The boys - maximum age of 18 - outstrip the women in every single category. In swimming over 50 and 100 metres, women Olympians wouldn't have even made the qualifying time.

Shooting? snooker? Sports that are slow and tactical are really the only sports that are unisex. eg chess, bridge. Sports that use other "equipment" combined with speed can be unisex - ie sailing, equestrianism where the strength of the athlete is a relatively minor factor in success.

Thanks for all the replies. Interesting reading. Instinctively agree trans women should not be competing against women in most sports but want to ensure I have an informed opinion. I'm trying to think of a sport where it would be OK and am having difficulties. Equestrianism presumably OK as it is atm. Is there a reason curling is sex segregated? Otherwise I'm struggling.

Wow that is a really great article. She's very articulate and clearly angry.

If you believe in fair competition, Emily Bridges should not be racing Laura Kenny

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3081c8c0-af7c-11ec-8b8c-0207c0fd6104?shareToken=7945c6a120d5a220f71fc30adaca4237

I came here to share this today - Nicole is one of my sporting heroes, who had such a battle herself to compete. She has fought for fairness in women's cycling throughout her career, and her retirement statement and autobiography was scathing about the unfair differences between mens cycling and women's cycling in terms of races, payment, organisation/infrastructure etc - the disparity was actually far worse than most people realised. I would throroughly recommend her autobiography to anyone.

I'm really pleased to see the perspective she brings to this debate, and its her own experiences of the way the national sporting bodies have acted (or failed to act) in the past, that makes her believe that they will not act now either, until they really, really have to - and that by then it will be too late for a lot of women.

Good article. We know the general public don't want men in women's sports. A the sport bodies and politicians need to catch up.

I'm not sure that many people realise just how great a cyclist Cooke was.
Her autobiography is excellent, and shows many of the extra barriers that women athletes face.

www.nicolecooke.com

What a great article and Nicola provides a solution. The trans lobby groups can spend their millions (much harvested from the tax payer) on trans sport.
I really appreciate the current quality of the coverage in the Mail. They've got to grips with the language, have understood that this is about women's rights and not "anti-trans" and are doing a sterling job is shedding sunlight. Dan Hodges piece about Starmer deserves plenty of clicks and this little link shows the breadth of their current coverage.
Who's have thought it!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/womens-rights/index.html

Including all the strands isn't profitable, more likely. Not many people will watch an all-trans category. But that's tough. It's taken long enough to gain some interest in women's sports. We had to fight for all these things and we won't give them up.

Like refuges and rape crisis services, the T lobby could have listened to and learned from women. And done the hard work like raised funds and made their case to the public. Instead they chose to do what they've done.

We say no.

Well done Nicole Cooke for speaking out - and so bluntly, too.

As for the union for female riders statement 'We recognise that achieving inclusion across all the strands of the Equality Act is complex.' Nonsense. The EA states that where there are reasonable grounds trans people may be excluded from the class that they have identified into. How can any sporting organisation not consider the precise reasons for separating sports into sex-based classes not to be reasonable grounds for retaining male people within the male class, whatever their identity?

Nicole's flyweight V welterweight comparison is excellent.

Wonderful, balanced article, written with common sense, decency and a genuine love of her sport. Thank you.

Thanks @JellySaurus and @AuntyFungal that's what I thought. And of course the other physical advantages and social advantages are added to the higher T. So it's simply unfair.