Transgender women to be banned from all female Olympic events

I thought Harper was one of the 8 as well. Surely that can’t be ethical?

Thank you! That was the website I was struggling to find.

i hadn’t heard about the Ninth Man before - interesting. If that is true and his results were discounted because they didn’t fit the narrative, then that’s … scandalous.

Regarding the number of participants whose self-reported results were included, it was 8.

Coach Linda Blade has written about this.
https://nequals8.com/

Funnily enough, there was a ninth man who reported improved performance when on hormones, but his results were withdrawn from the "study" because they were anomalous.
This particular individual was still training as hard as before, which probably explains his results. And demonstrates neatly that "hormone therapy" doesn't necessarily reduce performance.

Edited for clarity

Replied to wrong post

https://www.sportsintegrityinitiative.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/R15_47780_RaceTimesforTransgenderAthletes_FinalOF.pdf

here is the paper

I believe the methodology was very dodgy and some results were compared to very old times after the athlete had aged and then transitioned.

I found the 2015 Harper paper - it was 8 MtF transitioners.

Idk, I thought one of the cohort was…Harper, but I could be wrong.

complex😂 - female category is categorically for females.

Didn’t Harper’s original research include a minimal number of non elite athletes? Like 7?

“The issue of who should or shouldn’t be eligible for the female category is a complex question with lots of nuance”

No. No it isn’t.

We already know this happened too.

And that USAF study was just the start of it where they realised that these Mal people are only performing to the level they need too. They don't even have to be politically motivated, just 'unmotivated' if you know what I mean.

Miller really hates being reminded that he is playing women's rugby at regional level (I believe) and that he plays with mostly 20 & 30 year old women. And no female players of his age (50 + years, maybe even 55+years old now) play women's rugby.

And that in and of itself is a male advantage.

He gets very unhappy being reminded this.

There is an Australian trans woman called Kirsti Miller who posts incessantly on X about trans athletes. Miller was an Olympian pentathlete as a man and then transitioned and posts loads of supposed research that shows that trans women are less able than bio women. It is infuriating.

Apparently there’s a big push to limit the exclusion.

x.com/coachblade/status/1988548999482331298?s=46&t=24c39_JwRrH3k0oebVKtWw

Harper is Canadian and ran a 2:23 marathon as a student so, what, about 50 years ago, mid to late 70s. Harper's time then have obliterated the Canadian women's record of the time and would quite possibly still be the record today - only two Canadian women have ever run anywhere near as fast as that, the better of these two times being 2:23:12.

https://worldathletics.org/records/all-time-toplists/road-running/marathon/all/women/senior?regionType=countries&region=can&page=1&bestResultsOnly=true&firstDay=1900-01-01&lastDay=2025-11-12&maxResultsByCountry=all&eventId=10229534&ageCategory=senior

I remember seeing a video of a US teenager, Veronica Garcia, a male who won the state track title in the female category. All of the female athletes were going flat out, whereas in contrast, VG was running at a comfortable stride. And still won of course. It honestly blows my mind that adults can sit there and watch this and think it's ok.

You only need to look at Thomas when he was swimming to see that often he wasn't going full bore in his efforts.

I've wondered about this too. I know Emily Bridges is/was involved in a study where it will be in Emily's interest to demonstrate no advantage. But presumably they will measure things like heart rate etc, so it should be obvious if someone is not going at full capacity?

But I wouldn't trust any study that Joanna Harper oversees because of JH's demonstrable bias. JH should have been excluded from panels discussing male eligibility in the female category because of JH's very obvious bias and vested interests. This is apparent in the article above where everyone who has concerns about fairness in the female category is smeared as transphobic and hateful. JH is incapable of good faith arguing on this issue. I don't understand why intelligent people can't see that.

And we are told that JH is "softly-spoken". What relevance does that have? So we are supposed to feel sorry for poor, meek JH and all the other men being excluded from a category they don't qualify for?

A couple of things that struck me about the Harper article

Even today at age 68, Harper is an avid runner. As a young college student she put up a personal best marathon at 2 hours, 23 minutes

I have no idea how many non elite women runners would get close to that time.
If someone knows please post it, I can't imagine that it would be many if any.

Harper is against the idea of an open category as they would have to compete against males.

The cognitive dissonance with this is epic in proportions.

It was a study of fitness test results in trans adolescents. And while there’s limited data on trans adults, there’s no published data on trans adolescents and their athletic capabilities. This was an exciting study.

How many of the adolescence had started taking puberty blockers? and why were they allowed to do so?

The trouble with all this research is that there is no way of making sure that trans athletes are not deliberately reducing their performance levels to get the results the trans community wants.

He can see his gravy train grinding to a halt.

What lies and misinformation research is he going to get paid to produce now?

I don’t know… maybe it could if (and it’s a big if) the will was there. They are always going to be able to sex test these people - that’s the difference with drugs cheats, where if evidence wasn’t captured at the time, nothing can be proved subsequently. If somebody was male and competed in a female category, that could still be tested - and refusal to comply could mean a void result and, where possible, the award of a medal to a biological female athlete. I’m not saying it would happen, but I think the fact that it could is something that will hang over any cheating men and their enablers. I do hope so, anyway.

“The haters got wind of it,” she said. “It was a study of fitness test results in trans adolescents. And while there’s limited data on trans adults, there’s no published data on trans adolescents and their athletic capabilities. This was an exciting study.

“I regret that they make this decision. I wish they hadn’t pulled out,” she continued. “But, I think we should focus on the people who hate trans people and those aren’t the people at Nike. I understand in the wake of what happened to Bud Light that Nike got nervous. They made a corporate decision on this.”

and

She is paying sharp attention to the return of female testing in elite sports with three world governing bodies commenting, and the International Olympic Committee looking at making such testing uniform in every Olympic sport.

“The issue of who should or shouldn’t be eligible for the female category is a complex question with lots of nuance,” she noted. “I think reducing it to, say that anyone with a Y chromosome is not allowed in women’s sports, is a gross oversimplification. I certainly hope that the IOC doesn’t go down this path.”

It does seem that Harper is searching for the holy grail.

It will be interesting to see how what that adolescent review would deliver. Was it going to review performance figures? How would the team have judged whether the adolescents were performing at their peak or simply performing to the maximum capacity need to win?

I CBA to read it but good.
Harper is one of the people very much to blame for the ludicrous unfair position of the IOC for the last few years, with that spurious ‘research’ being presented as authoritative.