Nicole Cooke speaks out

[LittleWhingingWoman]

Olympic champ NICOLE COOKE - whose hero is a trans woman - speaks out https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10680099/Olympic-gold-medallist-NICOLE-COOKE-hero-trans-woman-bravely-speaks-out.html?ito=nativesharee_article-top

Ha! I remember watching Cooke win the Beijing road race and thinking "My God, Britain has actually won something!".

If anyone is a clear example of how badly women in cycling have been treated, it's Cooke.

Well done Nicole. I particularly liked her questioning the motive of trans athletes - if they want to win at any cost , they are just like the performance enhancing drug takers, cheating in effect. Otherwise the separate categories for trans - yeah!

Of course it’s unlikely there will be the fame and money in a separate trans section

That's a fantastic article, and the Mail carries a few of them today so pop your shades on cos sunlight abounds.

Cooke says:

Cooke added: 'Since in the UK, virtually all Olympic sports are publicly funded, politicians need to exercise their power over UK Sport to solve this problem quickly and let the UK take an international lead.'

Let's see if our politicians are up to it. We know Stella "baby on my lap bekiiiind" Creasy declared this one for scientists, not MPs this week. Well I respectfully disagree.

Save women's sports - today.

Great article, thanks for sharing.

Another strong voice. Another nail in the coffin of the myth that elite sportswomen are delighted and honoured to include self-selected males in their teams and races and the rest of us should butt out because we don't know what we're talking about. Thank you, Nicole.

Agree, the Mail has got the issue in its sights now - articles on impact on women and girls grassroots sports, possible boycott by female cyclists, Dan Wootten dissecting Starmers waffle etc. I don’t care if they are fully on board with it or not, they are publishing article after article highlighting the need to support women’s rights.

Correction - Dan Hodges, not Dan Wootton.

I want to ask...if a female athlete were to take testosterone to increase hers to the max level allowed for trans women (I.e. the level to which a trans athlete has to reduce to before being admitted to the women's competition) would that be acceptable? And if not why not?

BellsaRinging

No. If a natal women were to take T to bring their level to the current TW level, this would…

• be considered doping in sport & risk a ban.
• health & fertility issues
• T is not the end all for male performance. Puberty and Y chromosome also affect performance.

Of course not. That would be doping.

The ideology is inconsistent and the Be Kind response to it is inconsistent.

Thanks for sharing this. Really well balanced argument. I followed Nicole Cooke’s career for years, until she retired. I saw her in the street once, and said hello. She was astounded to be recognised!!

@BellsaRinging

I want to ask...if a female athlete were to take testosterone to increase hers to the max level allowed for trans women (I.e. the level to which a trans athlete has to reduce to before being admitted to the women's competition) would that be acceptable? And if not why not?

No, she would be banned and vilified for doping. And also, no amount of testosterone could give an adult female athlete a physical advantage over other women that comes close to those of someone who has gone through male puberty.

Thanks @JellySaurus and @AuntyFungal that's what I thought. And of course the other physical advantages and social advantages are added to the higher T. So it's simply unfair.

Wonderful, balanced article, written with common sense, decency and a genuine love of her sport. Thank you.

Well done Nicole Cooke for speaking out - and so bluntly, too.

As for the union for female riders statement 'We recognise that achieving inclusion across all the strands of the Equality Act is complex.' Nonsense. The EA states that where there are reasonable grounds trans people may be excluded from the class that they have identified into. How can any sporting organisation not consider the precise reasons for separating sports into sex-based classes not to be reasonable grounds for retaining male people within the male class, whatever their identity?

Nicole's flyweight V welterweight comparison is excellent.

Including all the strands isn't profitable, more likely. Not many people will watch an all-trans category. But that's tough. It's taken long enough to gain some interest in women's sports. We had to fight for all these things and we won't give them up.

Like refuges and rape crisis services, the T lobby could have listened to and learned from women. And done the hard work like raised funds and made their case to the public. Instead they chose to do what they've done.

We say no.

What a great article and Nicola provides a solution. The trans lobby groups can spend their millions (much harvested from the tax payer) on trans sport.
I really appreciate the current quality of the coverage in the Mail. They've got to grips with the language, have understood that this is about women's rights and not "anti-trans" and are doing a sterling job is shedding sunlight. Dan Hodges piece about Starmer deserves plenty of clicks and this little link shows the breadth of their current coverage.
Who's have thought it!

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/womens-rights/index.html

I'm not sure that many people realise just how great a cyclist Cooke was.
Her autobiography is excellent, and shows many of the extra barriers that women athletes face.

www.nicolecooke.com

Good article. We know the general public don't want men in women's sports. A the sport bodies and politicians need to catch up.

I came here to share this today - Nicole is one of my sporting heroes, who had such a battle herself to compete. She has fought for fairness in women's cycling throughout her career, and her retirement statement and autobiography was scathing about the unfair differences between mens cycling and women's cycling in terms of races, payment, organisation/infrastructure etc - the disparity was actually far worse than most people realised. I would throroughly recommend her autobiography to anyone.

I'm really pleased to see the perspective she brings to this debate, and its her own experiences of the way the national sporting bodies have acted (or failed to act) in the past, that makes her believe that they will not act now either, until they really, really have to - and that by then it will be too late for a lot of women.

@BellsaRinging

I want to ask...if a female athlete were to take testosterone to increase hers to the max level allowed for trans women (I.e. the level to which a trans athlete has to reduce to before being admitted to the women's competition) would that be acceptable? And if not why not?

And it would not create the advantages of living through a male puberty.

@BellsaRinging

I want to ask...if a female athlete were to take testosterone to increase hers to the max level allowed for trans women (I.e. the level to which a trans athlete has to reduce to before being admitted to the women's competition) would that be acceptable? And if not why not?

You might find this useful:

If you believe in fair competition, Emily Bridges should not be racing Laura Kenny

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3081c8c0-af7c-11ec-8b8c-0207c0fd6104?shareToken=7945c6a120d5a220f71fc30adaca4237

Wow that is a really great article. She's very articulate and clearly angry.

Thanks for all the replies. Interesting reading. Instinctively agree trans women should not be competing against women in most sports but want to ensure I have an informed opinion. I'm trying to think of a sport where it would be OK and am having difficulties. Equestrianism presumably OK as it is atm. Is there a reason curling is sex segregated? Otherwise I'm struggling.