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.

Fascinating article by Sean Ingle, especially digging into Dr Budgett's 2003 views and the really rather extraordinary 'inclusion first' views given at Sports Resolutions - staggered starts is certainly an idea, perhaps they're suggesting a handicap system like racing or golf. That could mean a single competition, no need for separate events. I do question whether that's at all viable in swimming with very limited lanes, but maybe. At least it's a new idea. Though the wrangling over the handicaps applied would be endless.

Swimming, at least at more junior levels does something similar for disabled swimmers. They swim in regular heats based previously achieved times, but are then placed, taking into account the assessed degree of disability, within a separate para-swimming table.

@PermanentTemporary

Fascinating article by Sean Ingle, especially digging into Dr Budgett's 2003 views and the really rather extraordinary 'inclusion first' views given at Sports Resolutions - staggered starts is certainly an idea, perhaps they're suggesting a handicap system like racing or golf. That could mean a single competition, no need for separate events. I do question whether that's at all viable in swimming with very limited lanes, but maybe. At least it's a new idea. Though the wrangling over the handicaps applied would be endless.

I'm not sure staggered starts would give transpeople the validation that they seek.

Also, if it denies a female from the chance to compete, this still disadvantages girls/women.

Finally, if a mtf transitioner wins a medal, despite the staggered starts, this still doesn't mean that the medal was won by a female.

I agree Edge. I'm trying to be open to ideas i haven't come across before. The concession of renaming male competitions as open and defining female competition boundaries seems so obvious to me that I can't really understand why we've ever got to this ridiculous point. Until I read Joanna Harper's comments. The unbelievably strong drive to define sex by current blood hormone levels alone is quite frightening.

At least it's a new idea. Though the wrangling over the handicaps applied would be endless.

Not sure how it advances anything. The transgender males would just insist that they should have a female handicap.

Having infrastructure for mixed-sex sports doesn't get around the issue that we're dealing with males refusing to be treated as males.

Yes, and no doubt arguing would start to try and break down the handicapping system.

Also again with the idea of 'inclusion' being the top priority without saying what it means to that person- in this case, inclusion of males as females.

Sean Ingles has always written balanced articles, I’m very surprised he is still employed by the Guardian

@nolongersurprised

Sean Ingles has always written balanced articles, I’m very surprised he is still employed by the Guardian

He's a man, writing in the sports section which is still largely a male domain. He won't be subjected to the same pressures as other sections.

The automatic timing systems would need a huge reworking to enable staggered starts, so not sure how practical that would be.

You want to be swimming alongside people of similar ability to be able to set a fast time. People swim/run faster if they are alongside a rival. Having someone start. 30 seconds after would not help anyone. The one ahead would not have anyone to push them forwards and the one behind would have the advantage of "chasing". Plus it would not make for good watching.

I am not sure why there is this need to accommodate transwomen. It needs to be simple. Either those with XY chromosomes are women, in which case they should be included in womens sport. Or they are not, in which case they should be excluded.

Complexities that need additional rules or judgements will only add to the confusion.

@PermanentTemporary

Yes, and no doubt arguing would start to try and break down the handicapping system.

Also again with the idea of 'inclusion' being the top priority without saying what it means to that person- in this case, inclusion of males as females.

The whole 'inclusion' idea in sports is just bonkers. Professional sport is one of the least inclusive professions. The exclusion is very rigid and is based on factors you cannot control - your physiological make up, genetic predispositions, luck in avoiding injuries etc. and it starts very early in life. I was a promising swimmer when I was a child, but as soon as puberty started it was evident I was not going to develop right body for swimming (too short), so at the tender age of 11/12 it was suggested I cease training and treat swimming as a hobby.

This happens to children and teens of both genders and they have to deal with it, so to suggest an adult trans woman will kill herself because she cannot do sports anymore is just offensive and ridiculous.

The rules requiring hormone suppression are inconvenient as they indicate a physical difference between men and women that can't be talked away. Hence the increasing number of voices calling for the end of these rules and straightforward self ID in sport.

There is nothing, no boundary at all, that will not be pushed at. Very soon the 2015 IOC rules will be framed as 'outdated'. I mean, I would agree, in that they represent peak gender and I am beginning to hope we have moved on from that stupidity.

It's a no from me to staggered starts - the arguments would be endless. Plus it would effectively label some athletes 'almost women' which I think might manage to be equally offensive to both women and transwomen.

I think I've read that some sporting categories that we think of as 'men's' are already universal.

@Needmoresleep

You want to be swimming alongside people of similar ability to be able to set a fast time. People swim/run faster if they are alongside a rival. Having someone start. 30 seconds after would not help anyone. The one ahead would not have anyone to push them forwards and the one behind would have the advantage of "chasing". Plus it would not make for good watching.

I am not sure why there is this need to accommodate transwomen. It needs to be simple. Either those with XY chromosomes are women, in which case they should be included in womens sport. Or they are not, in which case they should be excluded.

Complexities that need additional rules or judgements will only add to the confusion.

Exactly, plus, trans athletes will have all their advantages of the male skeleton/physique at the end of a race once they make up their staggered start time. I for one won't want to watch those races

I'm not sure staggered starts would work. Just look at mixed relays, so often one team leads, sometimes quite significantly, only for the last swimmer of the other team being a male who ends up overtaking everyone else.

An article on this by Mary Harrington in UnHerd unherd.com/thepost/feelings-dont-care-about-your-facts/ quotes a team member who insist on anonymity for fear of repercussions: ' "In private, though, she reports that the whole team has complained to their coach. But he doesn’t care: “Our coach [Mike Schnur] just really likes winning.”

Winning, then, has induced a college swim coach to disregard the many decades of research that show males perform on average 8.9% better across all swim styles, a gap that hasn’t narrowed since 1983. And he’s been able to do so because Lia Thomas’ inner sense of femaleness is deemed to take precedence over all the physiological advantages conferred by having undergone male puberty." '

Harrington observes:
"A consensus is now evident, across both sides of the aisle, that reality is less important than how we feel on the inside. We’re mainly fighting over what constitutes the right way to feel. ..."

This isn't about fitting into the right categories of sex / gender. It's about the desire, facilitated by the notion of rights, to 'identify as' and 'into' a category. It's not gender but 'gender identity' that's involved. The actual categories of sex/ gender, which are exclusive - that's the point of them - not 'inclusive', are being displaced by administrative redefinitions to suit the purposes of those who would find them advantageous and feel entitled to take advantage.

The politicians, the law and the administrative and regulatory authorities enable this and there is nothing left for it but for parents, women and the press and those public figures who would speak up, to go out and make visible protests. The swimmers, who have so much invested in their training and their sport, are put in an awful position of having to put up with it or lose their career and prospects.

That is a pretty odd analogy between Simone Biles and Lia Thomas. I'm feeling the reach there. Harrington could at least have said that Biles' attention to her inner state caused her to withdraw from a contest, not to compete in the wrong category. Harrington might also have acknowledged the straightforward lifethreatening danger that Biles is in doing what she does if she's not in the right place mentally. Her point seems to be that Time magazine made the wrong choice of person of the year: when surely 1. An athlete who won gold medals this year is a perfectly logical choice 2. Time magazine knows that Simone Biles on the cover sells.

@PermanentTemporary

That is a pretty odd analogy between Simone Biles and Lia Thomas. I'm feeling the reach there. Harrington could at least have said that Biles' attention to her inner state caused her to withdraw from a contest, not to compete in the wrong category. Harrington might also have acknowledged the straightforward lifethreatening danger that Biles is in doing what she does if she's not in the right place mentally. Her point seems to be that Time magazine made the wrong choice of person of the year: when surely 1. An athlete who won gold medals this year is a perfectly logical choice 2. Time magazine knows that Simone Biles on the cover sells.

There is the additional gross layer of comparing a black woman to a transwoman in that black women are often derided as being “masculine,” especially in sports. See the criticism of the Williams sisters (and of Michelle Obama during her time in the White House, despite not being in sport at the time).

Yes, my hackles rise at singling out such an amazing black female athlete - why not one of the (white, male) cricketers who has taken time out due to mental health crises, if you really want to make that rather unconvincing connection? I think Harrington means more to have a bash at 'liberals' and lefties along the lines of 'the coddling of the American mind'. But why choose a woman to compare to Lia? And in particular why choose Biles? Mainly i suppose because Harrington also knows that Biles sells. But it really sticks in the throat. A book I really enjoy is The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley, which is all about the psychological fragilities of Ian Botham and how to manage these for successful sport. Sports psychology is hardly a new profession. A remarkably tin-eared article, which i don't normally expect from Harrington.

@Floisme

It's a no from me to staggered starts - the arguments would be endless. Plus it would effectively label some athletes 'almost women' which I think might manage to be equally offensive to both women and transwomen.

I think I've read that some sporting categories that we think of as 'men's' are already universal.

Staggered starts wouldn’t work in swimming anyway, one of the problems with the mixed race was the water disturbance caused by swimmers in adjacent lanes swimming in different directions.

Very good point viques. It's a major issue in any water sport I think, certainly in rowing which I know best.

The way to be inclusive is for trans people to have their own category, not to adapt the situation for males and females to be inclusive. Both transmen and transwomen are taking drugs so should not be allowed to compete anyway. Transmen will never be able to compete in most sports as they do not have the physical advantage, transwomen will always be near the top as they maintain their physical advantage
I really hope we don't move to a ridiculous situation where we do staggered starts etc, it makes a mockery of sport, especially women's sport.

Here we have yet another male born competitor who didn't make the cut, rather than accepting, like most of us, that they aren't quite good enough they want to cheat to take records and medals away from women. Absolutely disgusting.

The Sean Ingle article is pretty good but still uses what is known as the 'Phelps's arm fallacy'. Almost all of Phelps's records have since been beaten by other men. He was an exceptional swimmer of his time, but he's no superman.

Though the wrangling over the handicaps applied would be endless

People would just game the system. With the trans issue in particular, looking for loopholes and levering them wide open is how the activists work. If they can find loopholes in the extremely simple system of dividing sports by sex I can’t even imagine what they’d do to a complicated handicapping system. You’d probably end up with handicaps based on how “marginalised” the competitors are and have transwomen starting ahead of women.

Sorry if this has been posted before.
Shocking to see how he finishes a full TWO LENGTHS ahead of the next placed woman. She got the applause though.