Elite sports people speaking up!

[Signalbox]

There seems to be an increasing number of sports people speaking up about the problem of males completing in women's sports which is positive. Thought it might be useful to have a thread of those who are risking sticking their heads above the parapet. Obviously the likes of Sharon Davies, Mara Yamauchi and Martina Navratilova have been bravely doing this for sometime but now we appear to have a few current athletes as well who are prepared to risk the mob to ensure women have fair competition. Is it too much to hope for that there will be a snowball effect?

🍾🥂

Omg sorry for inflicting random Daley on you - I copied and pasted that sentence link included, and I had no idea it would wind up with a picture of his mug on the page here!

At least he wasn't wearing one of those fugly jumpers.

Nicole Cooke

https://twitter.com/NicoleCooke2012/status/1662192949348773888

I stand with Deb. All women should be able to expect fair competition. I respect her for not pretending not to care and I hope her record is reinstated.

Short film by FPFW

Another man taking opportunities from women…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12120895/Trans-skier-took-spot-California-womens-race-competitors-dad-hits-result.html

Paula Scanlan, has now decided to go public about her experience at UPenn as a teammate of LT.

https://twitter.com/IWF/status/1665911891833638913

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Great interview, she’s so brave

She is a very brave woman.

and I believe the four women from Connecticut will be in court from today. That will be one to watch!

Oh really? Is this an appeal? It's so encouraging seeing all these young women speaking out.

It is signal. I have to say that Alliance Defending Freedom has been consistent in support women’s sport when no other group seems to have quite the power to do so at the moment.

https://twitter.com/adflegal/status/1664285225260822533?s=46&t=HTxp6zC_d4GZ2FFv4a-YeQ

Thanks for the link :)

Wrexham (men) have just beaten a US women's national team 12-0 in a semi-friendly seven-a-side tournament

https://thepostmillennial.com/4th-tier-mens-team-destroys-us-womens-soccer-team-12-0-reaffirming-that-biological-males-have-physical-advantages-over-women?utm_campaign=64506

Blimey - that’s a worse score line than I would even have predicted. Would have expected Wrexham to win, but not so devastatingly.

They're grown men, so it does make sense to me. The elite women's teams can sometimes compete against U17s or U18s but by senior team stage the physical advantage is insuperable. I'm more surprised that the match went ahead. I would have thought safety was an issue.

I've just read what was, until the very end, a very good book by the US runner Lauren Fleshman about how elite (and any) sport is set up for men, and how women need to be coached in different ways due to their different biology etc.

Lauren has set up her own coaching group for women and champions womens sport.

Until the very end of the book when she says there's no reason for transwomen not to take part in womens sport! I mean the whole raison d'etre of the book is that women are different from men!

Completely bizarre. And disappointing.

Half of the England ladies' angling team have quit in protest after a trans woman was selected to join the squad for a major competition, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

Now the team's captain, who was among those who quit, has told The Mail on Sunday she informed Angling Trust bosses she would rather have a 'rubbish woman' on the team.

She said male-born competitors had far more upper-body strength, adding: 'This is such an advantage, with the ability to cast longer distances than any woman. They have the capability of doing this while using more powerful equipment, such as stiffer and more powerful rods.

'Not to mention the extra strength she has wading in and out of the surf or walking through mud and rocks, and the stamina to keep this going for four or five hours.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12181413/Half-England-ladies-angling-team-quit-trans-woman-selected-join-squad.html?s=08

This is a really principled stance. To step down when it’s your own team that has the advantage and you are defending your previous gold medal win. Well done ladies 💐

Well done those women. And as the male Chief Executive had to admit Mr Cook admitted that "stronger competitors (ie men) have an advantage in shore angling"

So women are at a disadvantage yet Angling still allow a man to compete. Another shameful sports governing body.

It seems that the angling executive who made the decision that males don’t have enough advantage are perhaps misogynists. I suspect they haven’t looked far into this and just made the decision based on their assumptions.

That's a charitable interpretation - no-one who has lived more than 5 minutes on this planet can fail to understand the physical advantages males have over females. They just see women's sports as a consolation prize for anyone not good enough for men's.

Ongoing problem since 2018 it seems.

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/romney-marsh/news/amp/england-teams-first-transgender-angler-185602/

This Guardian article on an amazing woman cyclist, but why do I feel there's a subtext?

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/jun/13/leah-goldstein-the-cyclist-who-raced-men-across-america-and-won