Fina stops transgender swimmers from competing in women's elite events

Thank you Luna and Madcats for your work.

What is utterly amazing is that Swimming needed the science. When it’s clear as day that men will outperform women. How was this ever even in question. All sports will have to follow. Like a house of cards.

I think it some people confuse it with the time when testing relied on visual inspection. There's a an interview/transcript here based on interviews with female athletes who had to undergo this in the 1960s. There's no doubt that was demeaning as it involved standing naked holding your passport waiting to be pronounced 'normal' or not.

www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/rearvision/a-question-of-gender-the-sex-testing-of-female/7664118

I think there are some people who aren't particularly worried that this sort of testing ended before the Mexico Olympics. They just want a knee jerk reaction and it suits them to imply that testing can't be done in a way that doesn't compromise people's privacy or dignity.

Thank you Luns.

thank you Luna - very informative. Essentially as soon as puberty kicks in for boys, their physical advantages over adult women accelerates. It's the boiled egg example again, isn't it.

I'm pleased to read that FINA have been so through in their assessment of the situation as then, if challenged, the process will be transparent and clear.

This isn't especially scientific, and the approach is open to criticism, but here goes:
50m freestyle ( a popular race for younger swimmers)
In the past 12 months the fastest GB female swimmers is Anna Hopkin DoB'96 with 24.84 seconds.
There are 282 male swimmers who have swum faster than her in the past 12 months. a 13/14 year old boy swam faster than her with a time of 23.90 seconds

100m freestyle
Anna Hopkin is again the fastest GB female in the past 12 months with a time of 52.75 seconds.
There were 119 male swimmers faster than her in the past 12 months. She would have been beaten by a 15/16 year old (DoB 2006), who swam 51.93 seconds

200m freestyle
Freya Anderson is the fastest GB female swimmer in the past 12 months with a time of 1:56.96
There are 141 male swimmers who have swum faster than her this year. A 14/15 year old male (DoB 07) swam the race in 1:54.58.

That's the thing about swimming - competition times are readily available and have been for years.

Perhaps I ought to have gone back to 2019 since I suspect that it was only the elite athletes were able to get any pool time when public pools were closed (so the young boys would have been at a comparative disadvantage).

Thanks. On my phone even magnified i can't see the swimmers clearly. I wonder why they did that - reversing it reduces clarity.

If it rains this weekend, I might have a go at doing the comparisons for British swimming. It is easy enough to do from swimrankings, if a little tedious.

As a swim parent the whole "but it's fair" is so ridiculous.

That's a great article, Luna.

That's a great article. Shows comprehensive insight and fairness.
I hope these guidelines become the template for all sports

The two graphics are reversed. You have to read them in the direction of the little swimmers

I was walking behind a woman who was off to rugby training I assume (by her clothes and sports bag).

She had a big rugbys player build - but she has the softness and curves or a woman. You just couldn’t mistake her for a man. A man the same size and build would just not be be mistaken for a woman. He would have more strength and the benefit of stronger/larger muscles, heart and lungs.

They've definitely gone about this the right way. A shining example to other sporting bodies.

Thank you Luna. Such a good read.
Hopefully even the most Stonewall captured anti woman zealot in a sport like Rugby must have an eye on the consequences for them when they're sued by a woman maimed by a man in a game. Or a class action by a group of elite sportswomen bounced out of elite competition by the likes of Thomas.

No matter how much they rail, they still can't remove the facts and science - only pretend it doesn't exist.
All credit to FINA.

Thanks Luna. I'm confused by the freestyle chart- it appears to show males getting slower as they approach their peak. But the article is very interesting.

“Presented with the scientific report, they both agreed to speak at the Congress before the vote was taken, and urged delegates to support what the science was saying.

“Women, who have fought long and hard to be included and seen as equals in sport can only do so because of the gender category distinction,” Campbell said.

“To remove that distinction would be to the detriment of female athletes everywhere.”

A COVERT MISSION

Almost a year in the making, the policy draft was completed in time for the Congress, but was kept secret to all but a handful of people, because of the high sensitivity around the issue.

“Obviously as we went on, it was very important for me to protect the conversations I was having,” Nowicki said.

“I didn’t want anyone to have pressure put on them because it was leaked.”

The covert operation largely succeeded. It was only on the eve of the vote that the news of what was coming was leaked to an unsuspecting sports world.

When the Congress voted 71% in favour of adopting the new policy, it lit a fuse that exploded all around the world.

FINA’s decision - the most comprehensive of any major sporting body on the planet - has been widely applauded but also criticised.

Other sporting bodies are now scrambling to play catch up, facing increasing pressure to follow FINA although Nowicki said that was never the intention.

“The media has said it was a very aggressive policy,” Nowicki said.

“But we went as far as we needed to go to meet the legitimate objectives we felt were necessary for competitive balance, for fairness in our sport.

“We had such a sound body of evidence, we had a sound body of voice, we felt comfortable in our legal skin and we were prepared to go forward.

“We weren’t worried or concerned about what impact it would have on other federations.

“We’re taking the best decision we can take based on the evidence that’s presented by us, by our chosen people.

“It’s probably safe to say the policy’s never going to be complete. It’s a living document, it’s going to evolve with scientists and evolve with time.

“I can’t sit here and tell you that we got it 100% right. I can (just) say we got 100% right based on the science today.””

Still of graphic depicting swimming teenage male records vs adult female records (2).

“Overseeing the reforms - which promised to put the interests of athletes first - he soon discovered a whole range of issues that were not properly covered by the existing policies, including inclusion and fairness.

So he decided to take a deeper look, especially into the transgender debate, which had come up in other sports, so began assembling top international experts with no ties to the sport’s murky past.

“There was no preconceived notion. If anything, there was a desire to learn as much as we possibly could and figure out what does science say, what does it mean?” he said.

“I wanted an all star team where everybody’s a free agent.

“I wanted to know what it was. What is being transgender mean? What does it mean scientifically? What does it mean, chromosomally? What does it mean socially? What does it mean mentally?

“It’s not just being transgender that makes you transgender. There’s more to it than just the label you put on somebody. It was our duty to figure that out, educate ourselves.”
By November last year, the first group had already been chosen.

Comprising medical and science experts, it included Dr Sandra Hunter, an Australian-born professor at the Department of Athletic and Human Performance at Marquette University.

In early 2022, the science group had finished its report and handed it to Nowicki.

The full report has not been published but the architects addressed the Congress before the vote, explaining how competitions between male and female athletes are no longer fair once puberty kicks in because of the differences in testosterone values.

What’s more, the scientists showed how biological and physical changes can’t be undone, which was one of the decisive factors that convinced FINA to prevent transgender women from competiting in elite women’s events if they had gone through puberty - essential rejecting the idea that level playing fields can be created through testosterone reduction.

“In a very simplistic look on the street approach…where we drew the line was where the impact of testosterone meets between girls and boys,” Nowicki said.

“At that point, it’s arguable that the legacy effects of testosterone start to develop and you can’t undo that or you can’t undo all of that.”
Once it became clear what the science was saying, Nowicki set up a second working group, comprising legal and human rights experts, to look at how to frame the policy.

The five members included former Federal Court of Australia judge Annabelle Bennett and James Drake, an Australian barrister and CAS Arbitrator, now based in London.

Nowicki also began talking to athletes, sending out questionnaires to over 300 athletes around the world, to find out what they wanted.

The response was overwhelming.

More than 83% said eligibility for events should be decided by birth sex. And over 63% said they wanted to see an additional ‘open’ category created to ensure everyone can compete.

A separate taskforce, yet to be decided, will begin work on that soon, and is expected to report back at the end of the year.

Nowicki also held one-on-one interviews with a smaller number of elite athletes, whose identities remain confidential, other than Australia’s Cate Campbell and American Summer Sanders.”

Still of graphic depicting swimming teenage male records vs adult female records.

“Critically, he reveals that it started much earlier than people think - in 2021, not 2022 - and, contrary to popular belief, there was never any intention to exclude anyone.

Rather, the starting point for the project was to find a way to include everyone in a fair way.

It was only after FINA received the detailed report it commissioned from independent scientists and medical experts that it felt compelled to come up with a policy that effectively banned transgender women from competing in elite female competitions.

“We didn’t start with the goal posts in front of us. We weren’t trying to kick that ball through those goalposts,” Nowicki said.

“We were trying to move the ball down the field methodically, correctly, and that was the approach we had always taken.“

The starting point for the policy actually stems from FINA’s dark past, and the current push to finally clean it all up.
For much of its 114 years, FINA has been run primarily by men, who spent millions of the sport’s fortune on their own lavish lifestyles instead of competitors struggling to make ends meet.

But that all changed last year after FINA elected a new president - Husain Al-Musallam - on a platform to reform the organisation after its dirty secrets were exposed by a two-year investigation by News Corp.

Nowicki, a top American lawyer who had worked for years at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and has a reputation for meticulous planning, got straight to work the first day he sat down at his new desk - June 8, 2021.”

“The critics - and there’s plenty of them - accused FINA of rushing through with a half-baked policy just to block Thomas from competing at the next Olympics, taking place in Paris in 2024.

But the FINA executive who engineered and helped draft and oversee the development of the entire policy from start to finish, says that notion is a total fallacy.

“It’s easy to say Lia Thomas was the lightning rod but that’s not the case,” FINA’s chief executive director Brent Nowicki told News Corp.

“These issues, health and safety, welfare issues, competition, fairness issues, these are issues that have been in international sport for years now.”

In his one and only tell-all interview on the policy that has rocked the sporting world, Nowicki has lifted the lid on the true inside story on exactly how the policy that has divided the world came to fruition.”

“Inside story: The truth about FINA’s transgender vote and what the critics got so wrong”
Swimming has made headlines around the world this week and not because of the action at the world championships in Budapest but for the historic decision handed down on Monday which banned transgender athletes from competing against women. Julian Linden sat down with FINA’s chief executive director Brent Nowicki for the full story.

Story:
Of all the misconceptions about FINA’s game-changing policy for transgender athletes, the most deceitful is why swimming’s leaders took the plunge while other sports were content to sit back and wait for someone else.

The popular narrative is that FINA panicked because of the storm that erupted when University of Pennsylvania trans swimmer Lia Thomas won a national title at the American College championships.

Because that happened just three months ago, and FINA’s bombshell new policy was only made public when delegates were asked to vote on it at the Congress in Budapest last weekend, the simple but wrong assumption was that it was a hit job aimed squarely at Thomas.

@LunaLights could you cut and paste please -behind paywall

Excellent article from The Courier Mail, detailing the process behind the decision from the FINA President.

Hope the article isn’t behind a pay wall - can cut and paste some if it is:
www.couriermail.com.au/sport/olympics/swimming/inside-story-the-truth-about-finas-transgender-vote-and-what-the-critics-got-so-wrong/news-story/36405a9336065f655a0e8abf5a397bbb

How can Harper's study beproved to be robust when all the participants could be said to have a vested interest in proving a reduction in performance? Emily Bridges has stated that testosterone reduction has reduced cycling performance and yet only a couple of weeks before the intended change to the female category, Bridges was winning men's races, where was the performance reduction there?

I like that piece. Short, clear and to the point. Hadn't thought of it that way around - that the aim of eligibilty is to promote inclusion (of the class of the eligible people). The example of boxing is good.

Even if (and that's a bloody massive can see if from the moon with the naked eye if) there was a way found to negate all male physical advantage in sport that still wouldn't make it OK for men to compete as women in my eyes because the social and cultural attitudes to women and men in sport are very different. Making men slower/weaker doesn't mean that have to miss at least a year of competition if they choose to have a child, it doesn't take them back to junior level with afterthought provision (e.g. I know of a local football club where new kit is bought for the boys team and the old kit is then passed to the girls team). It doesn't mean they are called gay if they do sports or told boys won't fancy them if they have muscles. Being slower and weaker doesn't negate the issue of male bodies in women changing rooms and showers.