Three of four transwomen athletes drop out of IOC study

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www.thetimes.co.uk/article/795785c4-a244-11ed-be83-0b182bac2124?shareToken=2ead637da0692374f4adc45913210172

Harpers last study on just 7 participants was enough to get policy change at the IOC. This new study was obviously meant to back up the IOCs currant stance. What happens now? Harper seems to be trying to style it out.

The photo caption made me LOL.

😂 They also committed the sin of spelling transwoman without the space.
Call IPSO!!!

A sample size of four is ludicrously low to begin with, a drop-out rate of 75% should make any study binned.

What Harper now has is a study about Emily Bridges and relevant for only Emily Bridges and nothing more.

As Emma Hilton says in the article “ one athlete is a case study”

the results of Emily proving that Emily can cycle with the women will of course be perfectly acceptable proof.

History...

When you find the mumsnet archives...

yes people were this bloody stupid!

I know it's nuts!

We tried to tell them.

We know Bridges wants to compete in women's races. By what methodology are they ensuring Bridges isn't gaming the results? It seems obvious they would. This study is meaningless.

I’d be interested to know if the IOC have provided any research grants to people researching women’s health or performance, such as period impact, ACL injuries, etc.

I suspect not 🤨.

British Cycling are still faffing around trying to formulate a new trans policy. Is that the only thing that’s holding him back from competing? I’d guess he may be eligible for the UCI rules now. They just ask for 24 months of testosterone at 5nmol.
Harper will be monitoring Bridges’ T levels as part of this study. Perhaps they are above 5?

You might not find the, in the archives because Mama Bridges had many threads about EB deleted.

Just popping this down for anyone new to Terflandia:

www.itv.com/walesprogrammes/articles/race-to-be-me

ITV Wales puff piece documentary on Bridges.

Copy and paste blurb (pronouns not my choice!)

The deeply personal story of elite Welsh trans cyclist Emily Bridges as she fights to represent her country in the female category for the first time at the Commonwealth Games.

ITV Wales cameras follow Emily over 18 months of hope and heartache as she finds herself at the centre of an international sporting debate.

Now I’m cracking up at ‘elite Welsh cyclist’

Surely that should read ‘Welsh elite cyclist’?

🤣

Of course, Bridges is only Welsh due to the address on Bridges’ utility bills…

I note that Bridges seems to have already decided the outcome of the study ie that the reduction in testosterone levels the playing field.

I wonder who dropped out and why?

I opened it thinking 75% dropped out.
Am I the only one laughing to realise, yes it's 75% - but it was also 3 out of 4. Literally. 😂

When we give our experiences and tell our stories it's dismissed as anecdotal. A sample size of 1 is not good enough. Yet, Bridges in a study now all about Bridges is science and research!!

And Bridges as a case study already exists. They’ve put out data on Bridges changes in power. But not the raw data. How do we know that Bridges was going as hard as required?

I was gobsmacked at the bit when Harper said she had a grant from the IOC but they were 'flexible'. That's very . . . errr . . . tolerant of them. Don't they care about the methods at all? Do they just want the pro-trans findings? Who TF in the IOC made that decision?

And yes, Bridges does rather have an interest in the outcome pointing in one particular direction.

This is Bridges who on gaining bronze in a male event the week before he became eligible for female events said that he wished he hadn't tried so hard in the male event because it looks bad. 🤔

Here’s a link to an interesting thread from Jon Pike. He shows some slides from Harpers research which indicate EB’s outputs against two significant periods of his life and the period on x-sex hormones.

One could argue that the period between going public on his transition and the UCI is not only the period on hormones but the period when EB was motivated to train because there was a potential place in the Commonwealth Games up for grabs.
During that period EB’s training load was high and it no doubt dipped after the UCI announcement. At the time, according to the ITV documentary, EB decided he couldn’t go back to racing against men this limited his options to continue training at previous levels.
I guess that’s a long way of saying there are multiple variables at play here which Harper does not acknowledge in this study. It’s basically a very expensive shambles.

twitter.com/runthinkwrite/status/1621072256846950400?s=46&t=c0TScWdsOSx3Kcs5kSX8XA

How will they know if Bridges is trying their best in any performance testing? I guess this project just self IDs as research.

So this study of one participant is going to be statistically insignificant, full of investigator bias, not even double blind, and has no control group, did I miss any of the ways this is total junk science?

Well Bridges isn’t training as much. So that’s one thing.

The only way to know for sure if Bridges is trying hard is to see the raw data on a critical power test. If it’s full effort it will be reflected in heart rate and cadence recordings. If Bridges doesn’t reach a maximum heart rate for those efforts at a cadence considered appropriate then the power data is not a true reflection.

In other words, it’s easy to fudge.

If an A-level student handed in this methodology with results and believed they had advanced science in some way, I would have to sit them down and have a very serious talk with them about How Science Works.

What is the point of this? What a waste of money.