London marathon accepts trans women as women

So what? Are the women coming 6159th and lower deserving of losing a place?

Nice that you think so.

She finished 6,160th out of 20,123.

With years of evolution and trouble shooting and systems like paralympic ones it may eventually work.

But yes. It will initially come from years of mess with beta male athletes and the occasional female with enough talent and normally illegal drugs on board. However good luck to them so long as the women's and men's races are left unmessed with while it evolves.

A two-time Olympian has ripped rules that allowed a transgender runner to beat nearly 14,000 women in the female category of the London Marathon.

Mara Yamauchi — who finished sixth in the marathon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics — lashed out after trans racer Glenique Frank, 54, gushed to the BBC about using “girl power” to run the key UK race on Sunday.

“Males in the [female] category is UNFAIR for females,” Yamauchi tweeted alongside a clip of the mid-race interview by the sports bra-wearing runner who also gushed about soon becoming “a gran.”

“Nearly 14,000 actual females suffered a worse finish position [because] of” Frank, wrote Yamauchi — who said that even when she was “ranked second in the world” as a woman, “at least 1300 men ran faster than me.”

She noted how UK Athletics applied World Athletics’ rules on the exclusion of transgender women from elite female competitions at the end of March to make it “fair for athletes who have gone through male puberty to be excluded from the female category in athletics.”

However, it allowed those who had already entered races to still compete in categories that were not their biological sex.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/25/trans-runner-glenique-frank-ripped-for-beating-14k-women-in-london-marathon/

I mean essentially testosterone is doping so I don't even know if the open category is OK.

The women’s plus AFAB category would need to exclude women who have taken testosterone though. Those individuals could compete in the open or men’s category as they saw fit. Or start their own sporting events and competitions.

Surely it's simple. In exactly the same way as 'freestyle' in swimming is the crawl.

Make the 'men's' category an open category and the women's defined as for biological women (and AFAB NB people if that's how they would like to identify). Just like freestyle is always the crawl (because it's faster) the open category will always be won by biological men (because they're faster). But it affirms all the genders anyone wants to have affirmed.

I don't see any issues IF sport is about fair competition and inclusion. The IF is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

People who say that places don't matter if you're not at the sharp end reveal just how little they think of amateur sport, particularly when the athletes involved are women.

I didn't start at the sharp end and I'm only just into the sharpish end now but I certainly wouldn't have got there if my achievements had been diluted and diminished at the outset. I only started seriously running training because I started to do a bit better in terms of placing/ranking and realised I could actually be competitive. It makes me so angry.

A friend of mine ran this year for a charity of another friend who died of cancer. She's in her late sixties and only took up running after retirement, she's amazing. It's so bloody unfair. Why isn't there a separate trans category, I understand that biological men would invariably win that category but it's surely better than them appearing as women on the statistics. My friend has finished a place lower because of Glen/Glenique.

Wonder if he's ever seen the Ed Wood film 'Glen or Glenda'...

I don't think it would be the first time. A compliment, I suppose...

The Daily Mail have it as a story - easily googled. I think they've been reading some of the comments on here! 😉

As with every other situation, in reality it does not work.

The ability for falsifying legal documentation gives only the one option: to allow those who wish to do whatever they like to their own benefit, while completely fucking up the situation for everyone else beyond repair.

So how are the bodies that have ruled on transgender participants, such as UKA and IOC, going to check sex in future? If ID documents can be changed without a GRC. And what about where they are changed with a GRC?

I read into this a bit more and Glenique and a few others who ran in the female category at Manchester (including one who would have 'qualified' for GFA) are allowed to compete in these races under the transitional arrangements that UKA agreed -won't be the case for next year's marathons, though I don't know who will be policing it. You have to provide proof of age but you don't have to provide proof of sex because 'gender' on passport and driving license can be changed without a GRC. What a mess.

But non binary is a choice, whether they feel it is or not

I'm not anti trans, but I am anti trans in sports that have a sex based advantage

The new ukA rules should make this impossible though? The London Marathon is a UKA licensed event and from 31 March trans women are not allowed in the women's category. So I hope anyone we saw at London was running in non binary or their correct sex category, otherwise they are breaking the rules.

Search on the results site under Event Mass, Gender Women -https://results.tcslondonmarathon.com/2023/?page=7&event=MAS&num_results=1000&pid=list&search%5Bsex%5D=W&search%5Bage_class%5D=%25

• there's Glenique Frank, Place (Overall) 21582, Place (Gender) 6160, Place (Category) 582.

Just checked, this minute.

That's just the individual who was on the TV. So who knows how many others there were.

I have a GFA qualifying time for London next year, I'm desperate to do it, it's been a goal of mine for years. There are only 3000 places (plus approx 600-800 champs qualifiers). I don't want any of them taken by men. I literally stalk RunBritain rankings trying to find out how many women are likely to qualify and if I need to try and improve my time. So I care pretty fucking much about fairness in this.

The new ukA rules should make this impossible though? The London Marathon is a UKA licensed event and from 31 March trans women are not allowed in the women's category. So I hope anyone we saw at London was running in non binary or their correct sex category, otherwise they are breaking the rules.

Sick to the back teeth of these thieving chancers and our pandering institutions.

Get these horrible men out of women's spaces!

This matters. I am not in the region of GFA, but am reasonably paced if I put in some effort at training. And I like to judge myself against women.

My son's sport when registering him to be able to do competition was clear:

Sex at birth (this is your competition category)
And then chosen gender on there or something. But clear that people compete in birth sex. That should be the rule for all of it.

Thanks - I hadn't spotted that it had changed!

Of course they won’t! Did you not see the rainbow alley, or whatever it was called, all decked out in stonewall flags and #weall runtogether type slogans?

Let’s not forget that the first woman to run in the Boston marathon, Katherine Switzer was literally pushed off the course by men.
Plus ça change 🙄

For sure @Ginmonkeyagain , and they'd be cheats! How could you feel proud of your time without some serious cognitive dissonance... I'm waiting to slip into the next age category so that I move higher up the ranks or have a better chance of GFA or championship entry (currently at the top end of 18-39 by marathon standards so would get my ass whooped by the young whippets in that category). I can't just identify in to being a couple of years older... Not only would it be a really weird thing to do, I'd be a liar and a cheat.

As people have said - it really really matters. Mr Monkey is a pretty serious marathon runner. Getting a Boston Marathon qualifying time is a really coveted prize amongst serious amateur marathon runners. He has worked really hard to reach this goal and got a qualifying time this month. The women's qualifying time for his age group is a full 30 minutes slower. It has taken him about 18 months sheer hard work to get 30 minutes off his PB. Are you telling me there aren't men who wouldn't consider an easier route?

Here you go.

For the 2023 results you can search by event. name and/or number and also event, gender and (age) category.

https://results.tcslondonmarathon.com/2023/