Phillipa york in the guardian

Yeah, it makes you wonder what he good thought that doping with testosterone at the Vuelta in 1992 - for which he served a fine and a suspension - was going to do for him if it doesn't improve strength and stamina..🙄

@SinnerBoy nails it downthread. TRAs in general are light on arguments because practically every word they spout is demonstrable BS. It isn't even necessarily ignorant BS, but outright lies. The likes of 'Pippa' York appear to live in a topsy-turvy parallel universe where fact equals fiction and vice versa.

It's one of the most fascinating exercises in reverse logic and cognitive doublethink I think I've ever witnessed. Actually, scrub the 'reverse logic'. To reverse it, there would have to be logic there in the first place, and I don't think as yet we've come that far ...

Yet another middle-aged transvestite being given a national platform for his misogyny. Thanks, Guardian.

How can he claim that testosterone doesn't improve strength and stamina, with a straight face? He's lying through his teeth, he knows that's exactly why he took it.

Think you've nailed it there. 👏

I note that they are still light on actually taking on the legal arguments. It is just more of the same 'poor transwoman' articles and absolutely zero on women's experiences.

"somebody who’s been through male puberty has this innate advantage is just ludicrous. People come in all sizes. Each of us has different levels of testosterone at which our body is healthy."

What's his theory for why the fastest men are so much faster than the fastest women?

Does he think the women just aren't trying hard enough?

This is delicious irony.

The problem isn't just that - they are completely different drugs.

So he can't see the difference between preventing pregnancy in young children who may well be abused by older man, and people taking sex hormones? Another one who isn't going to click on that.

It's not just fact free, it's active disinformation.

It is a reminder that we are approaching Tour de France season though.

I thought it was good that they countered the misinformation being spouted by PY in the article. Let's hope the Guardian can make a habit of producing more balanced journalism in this area.

And it clearly illustrates why people like PY should be no where near decision making when it comes to trans inclusion in sport. They are unable to put their bias and personal experiences to one side to look at the science objectively. It was advice from Gendered Intelligence that caused the English and Wales Cricket Board to produce their woeful trans inclusion policy that has only recently been overturned. It is a terrible idea to involve activists in policy making.

PY sounds incredibly bitter to accuse British Cycling of having a problem with the LGBT spectrum just because they decided to protect the female category. Unlike other sporting bodies, British Cycling actually listened to their female athletes (who apparently were planning boycotts).

It is just another male person leveraging their little knowledge about female people to advantage other male people. It is misogynistic bullshit

A short blip following the SC ruling saw the Guardian go uncharcteristically quiet and even produce one or two sensible articles. Seems that over the past few weeks it's reverted to being up to its tits in GI again.

Sport has finally got with the programme on this issue, with some very welcome intervention from courageous former athletes like Martina Navratilova and Sharron Davies. More and more are defining women's categories as precisely that.

The tide has turned. They have lost.

"somebody who’s been through male puberty has this innate advantage is just ludicrous. People come in all sizes. Each of us has different levels of testosterone at which our body is healthy."

Again, really sketchy understanding of hormones.

If he conflates the pill with GnRH analogues, he has a very sketchy understanding of hormones, which is rather worrying, given that he is presumably on hormone treatment.

Self serving and deluded.

The comments he made against BC are also bang out of order. The Federation bent over backwards at first to accommodate him and his ideas, in particular their then Head of Comms. This was a misguided attempt to make the sport appear ahead of the curve, and when it became apparent that some backtracking needed to be done to consider actual fairness, PY didn't like it and threw her toys out of the pram. He was also less than considerate to the female riders on the squad right from the start.
If you go to the cycling centre you can watch the riders train. I've lost count of the times I've done so. If staff have written to the UCI it's possibly because if they have spent months helping the likes of Laura Kenny and Katie Archibald be the very best they can be, training so hard that they vomit when finishing a session, and it can't be easy to then watch a second rate, no-mark cyclist like Emily Bridges try and take one of those slots on the squad.

Oh look. He thinks that anyone who thinks males shouldn't compete in female sport should be sacked. 🙄

Obvious not 'talented' enough with the testosterone he already had:

Millar, R positive 14/05/1992 Positive test ID 811
Millar tested positive for a high testosterone level following Stage 18 of the 1992 Vuelta. He received a fine, a time penalty in the race and a temporary suspension.
Millar, R positive . Dopeology

That said, even if he was 'assisted' in some way, so were most of the other competitors, so he did do well in the Tour de France and other big races.
Pity he didn't stick to recalling his career in professional cycling instead of dabbling in amateur pharmacology and physiology.

Such confused thinking. I am sorry for him, he sounds bitter and unhappy but extremely irrational and ill informed. I can understand the bitterness and unhappiness, but to re state known untruths about transition can only be seen as deliberate and misleading.

For example ,I don’t know what surgery he has had, but it is well known that if you give puberty blockers to very young boys, the suggestion in the article is twelve, then their penis does not develop sufficiently to be viable for use in neo vaginal surgery, meaning that either an unsatisfactory result ensues, or a part of the colon is used instead which is very problematic and usually leads to difficult outcomes with their own challenges and potential distress. As a fully developed male this would not have been an issue (if he had had this surgery), but puberty blockers at 12 would deny this opportunity - I use the term lightly- to others. I am very pleased he was challenged on the permanent advantages of height and strength male puberty endows on male athletes and transitioned transwomen, again something he is prepared to deny.

If he wants to be seen as someone with value to add to the debate he needs to be honest, not least about his undeniable sporting achievement which he achieved as Robert, not as Pippa, painful as it might be for him to admit it.

I disagree slightly, @Straighthairday - I think real journalism would have involved either challenging the account given during the interview or, if the reporter only found out later that the information was untrustworthy, going back and asking for further comment. Instead I think they've chosen a pretty cowardly way out which will please no-one.

Actually it is a real exercise in journalism. Ludicrous claim spouted followed by the actual consensus view from literature. I actually think if this had happened 10 years ago we might not have landed in this spot. People would have listened to the ludicrous claim and understood it was rooted in emotion and not logical and given the due empathy for the break with reality the person was clearly experiencing and then just went about their day.

It is endlessly tiresome to have women’s sports mansplained to the world by blokes who have no understanding of human anatomy and physiology. This is what happens in MtF transition, according to him:

“People don’t understand the physiological changes. Your testosterone basically drops to zero. Testosterone doesn’t make you stronger, it’s part of the system which repairs the damage done by exercise.”

🙄🙄🙄

As Robert Millar he was one of the greatest cyclists in history, a King of the Mountain. What can he know about the experience of being a female cyclist?