Penn’s Lia Thomas breaks 200/500 Free records in meet with Princeton, Cornell

[Helleofabore]

USA women’s freestyle swimming records were broken this weekend!!!

To all those who keep using the ‘scale’ argument to justify inclusion of males in female sport, tell us again how it takes more than one male competing in female sport to significantly and negatively impact that sport?

I am very happy to hear your well thought out and evidenced reasoning.

swimswam.com/penns-lia-thomas-breaks-200-500-free-records-in-meet-with-princeton-cornell/

Penn’s Lia Thomas blasted the number one 200 free time and the second-fastest 500 free time in the nation on Saturday, breaking Penn program records in both events. She swept the 100-200-500 free individual events and contributed to the first-place 400 free relay in a tri-meet against Princeton and Cornell in her home pool.

Sounds wonderful until you realise that for their first three years competing in the competition, they competed as a male.

twitter.com/coachblade/status/1465517693386121217?s=21

Coach Linda Blade’s tweet says :

Well of course women’s records are being smashed!

Lia competed as male for first three years in #NCAA.

This is not right!

We need to return to #SexBasedSports!

#SexNotGender to preserve fairness for female athletes.

I was going to post that society and institutions hate women, but this feels more like utter contempt. Like there's not even enough respect to hate us. I mean who gives a fuck that women are being cheated if a few sad men get to feel euphoria.

@WorkingItOutAsIGo

No photos of the victorious Lia in the article- wonder why not?

No, but there is one in the tweet.

Ross Tucker has been tweeting about it today. He brings about a good point. This persons best as a male for 200 m was 1.39.31 so currently only 4% off. And early in season (plus a break) so Ross believes it is likely that this swimmer could continue to improve.

Making a) the record even less likely to be broken and b) starts to disprove that ‘loss of performance’. I mean 4% loss is not convincing anyone that transitioning brings males into female ranges.

@PermanentTemporary

Imagine how great it would be if Lia had continued after transition in the men's category. Had campaigned for it to be an open category. I would love to be able to support Lia in that.

I will never understand what is going on in the head of someone telling themselves that this is perfectly fine and they are doing the right thing. It's so obviously, egregiously wrong.

I couldn't agree more.

Just trying to imagine the "well, it's not Hubbard's fault, the rules allow it" being used for any other situation.
You're technically allowed to blare your music until 10pm, not shift over on the motorway when other drivers are trying to get on, and not bother holding the door for the old lady behind you, or say thanks when someone holds the door for you. But you'd be viewed with contempt for all those things.
And as datun pointed out, they have lobbied for these outrageous rules.

The other thing that gives Thomas an advantage is a race suit. I’m assuming Thomas didn’t stand on the blocks bare chested and was wearing one rather than just briefs or jammers.

Race suits give an advantage by covering more of the skin with material designed to repel water. The all body suits for men were banned by FINA because they gave too much advantage. Being able to cover hips to shoulders gives an advantage.

Race suits for women are tiny. Ridiculously tiny. My 13 year old daughter has one and when you hold it up it looks like normal swimming suit for a 4 year old. I’m fascinated to know how and where Thomas sourced one to fit, and how Thomas got into it. It takes my 13 year old daughter 20 minutes to get it on and her anatomy is….shall we say….different, with different body parts to squeeze into the suit .

So not only does Thomas have male advantage, Thomas has suit advantage that isn’t afforded to other males when racing against males.

Disgusting.

I mean 4% loss is not convincing anyone that transitioning brings males into female ranges.

I’d point out that we don’t know what hormonal steps this swimmer has taken as part of their transition. What rules do the US collegiate system impose on people wanting to swim in the female category?

Are they required to have hit a certain T-level or is it just a case of self-ID?

I keep being told and reading that GenZ are kind, thoughtful, they understand discrimination. Well I want someone to tell me how cheating, obfuscating, distorting statistics, refusing to debate and cancelling are kind actions? Appalling stuff, all of it! In a real huff about stuff over the past week

PaterPower

Not sure what steps they have taken. Either way, what does it matter because under the regulations of that competition, they were allowed to swim.

But if I read anything that states they have lowered T (I assume they have but happy to be proven wrong) or not, I will post.

Just found it. Lia will have had to take a minimum of a year’s worth of hormone suppressants to be eligible to swim in a female team:

.ncaa.org/sites/default/files/Transgender_Handbook_2011_Final.pdf

But of course there’ve been no authoritative studies of what impact hormone suppression actually has on male athletic performance, so it’s all very finger in the wind.

In what way pater. You don’t think the two reviews of the 13 studies was authoritative enough?

Or. Swimming specific?

it's all so hard and complicated and we just can't understand properly.

The thing is, for genderists it genuinely is really really really hard and complicated, because they are trying to find a way to make reality fit in with something they believe very strongly should be true but actually isn't. So they keep having all these exceptions pop up which have to be explained and catered for, and it just gets more and more complicated.

It's hard and complicated for exactly the same reason predicting the motion of the planets is hard and complicated when you try to make it work with the earth rather than the sun at the centre.

Whereas for the gender critical it's very very simple...sex exists and one's sex determines significant aspects of one's physical capabilities regardless of one's belief about one's internal gender identity or lack of. There is no need to segregate sports by gender identity because it doesn't affect performance, but there is a need to segregate sports by sex because it does.

Yet again, this whole issue is purely on the genderists' side because they have this ridiculous double think where your sex is not your gender, and yet somehow at the same time someone recognising your sex is a comment on your gender. But if sex is not gender, how can recognising someone's sex in occasions where sex is relevant have any bearing whatsoever on their gender? Like so much of this ideology it makes no sense. The real reason is that for all the rhetoric about "smashing the gender binary", this ideology requires a mass of us to accept society imposing sex/gender links on us (aka "cis") to create the target gender groups for trans people to identify into.

Or just at elite level, pater?

It doesn't matter if Lia has taken any steps to decrease his testosterone levels - all you need to do is to see a photograph of him to see that he is a strongly built man, not a woman.

To pater: women are not men with a natural low testosterone level.

Have you ever stopped to consider for example having periods will have on a female swimmer? If as a girl you want to continue swimming when your periods start at 11-12 and especially if you have swimming matches that last all day? That swimming costume someone else mentions, you have to take off to change a tampon. At 11-12 years old. Change the tampon and then try and get the damn thing on again.

This person will never ever experience anything like that. Or the drop in performance that is often seen around menstrual times. It is infuriating that people find this even remotely ok.

Here's a link to Penn's swimming and diving web site. Let's spot the male.

Women’s sports no longer exist. Any man who is mediocre in his sport can identify as female and get accolade and medals in the women’s category.

I can’t wait for an Olympics with all the women’s teams to trans women (men) so everyone can see how ridiculous this is .

These women and girls are training their whole life and here comes someone with their dick swinging in to take it away .

But it’s very in line with male behaviour.

And it's instructive to keep scrolling down that Twitter thread for another photo.

Googled in the hope of seeing this lovely lady in a swimming costume.Only that head and shoulders shot available, wonder why.....

Just to clarify these are ‘yards’ not ‘metres’ too.

Looking into it, the current US record seems to be for women 1.39.10 But there is some ambiguity around the times.

And obviously a US only competitive distance it seems. But to put it in context, Missy Franklin might hold the record. Katie Ledecky has swum the distance in 1.40.36.

At the start of November, Thomas won against Columbia Uni with 1.46. And improved this time with 1.43.47.

Only half a second off the NCAA A cut, it is the second-fastest women’s 200 free time in the nation so far this season, and it would have scored in the A final at 2021 NCAA Championships. She came to the wall 6.1 seconds ahead of her teammate, Bridget O’Leary (1:49.56).

It seems their pb as a male was around 1.39. I guess we shall see where the season ends.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missy_Franklin

I continue to be amazed at the people who purport to support "trans people" and yet hold them to massively lower standards of behaviour than anyone else in society.

As PP above said, just because you can, doesn't mean you should. How does cheating in a competition even feel good to this person? Or do validation feels trump everything?

All this rubbish about "nobody does genital checks in the bathroom". No, they don't. They shouldn't need to because part of the deal to living together in society is decent behaviour towards other humans. There isn't the resources to police everything. Why do trans activists act as if trans people have zero self control and zero self worth? If that's really the case (it isn't) encouraging trans people to behave like angry toddlers isn't the 'be kind" solution they think it is.

I think Lia needs to add an r to their name. We see you, Lia.

I had a look at Sharon Davis’ Twitter to see what she had to say, she is re tweeting but hasn’t made a direct comment.

Interestingly the British swimming body has recently announced that they are honouring the coaches of swimmers historically judged to have been cheated out of rightful medals largely due to Eastern European drug cheats.( Apparently the IOC is also considering awarding medals in the same situation. #about time too) Sharon’s dad is amongst them -he was a national coach- which is great news.

Let’s hope that someone joins up the dots and realises that unless the IOC and other sports associations review and tighten up their decisions and accept that women’s sports are being deliberately infiltrated by gender cheats, they will be awarding historical medals to female bodied athletes who have been denied their rightful rewards for the rest of time.

This makes me so angry. Would it be inappropriate to say fucking cheat?