Transwoman wins women's US cycling race & gets $35k prize

[MrsJamin]

Austin Killips won the Tour of the Gila women's race www.cyclingnews.com/races/tour-of-the-gila-2023/stage-5-women/results/
Just outrageous. Any tweet by the organisers mentioning Killips has restricted comments (but of course many quote tweets)
It's getting more and more ridiculous:

• the rider retained their original male first name, Austin.
• they rode for the Amy D Foundation, set up to encourage and support young women through cycling, inspiring the celebration of healthy challenge and empowering the confident pursuit of lofty dreams.
• this is the first year the women's prize money is the same as the men's.

You couldn't make it up. When will the most sports-loving country in the world protect and give a shit about women in sport?

@JellySaurus well of course it only goes one way, it’s STFU women and do as you are told. #beKind = #BeObedient.

Women athletes are left with two choices.

1. Boycott / speak out publicly and end your career ( no might or maybe here, you will get banned from official events and participating in non official events will also get you banned ) and receive death threats, perhaps lose your day job and risk any other future jobs etc
2. Stay quiet and hope you don’t meet a transwoman in your event.

Wishing this cyclist much publicity and media coverage.

Let the fucking sunlight stream in, pal.

For those that say it is so rare as to not make a difference three-time Olympian and five-time national road race champion Inga Thompson said there are now 50 transgender women in the sport.

The cycling bodies like UCI that are allowing this are basically corrupt.

Cycling does seem to be particularly seriously affected. Presumably that's because you get an awful lot of men who cycle as a hobby to quite a high standard. So you only need a small percentage of those men to identify as women and suddenly you've got a disproportionate number of above average males entering elite women's competition.

And cycling has always had cheating, too. This is an easy way to cheat.

One of the things we can all do is to keep speaking up about this. We know it's the one thing (along with what's happening to children) that most people agree on - that it's wrong, unfair, cheating and will demolish women's sport.

TUCKINGFYP0 has spelled out the career ending consequences for sportswomen who protest - so we're just going to have to keep on talking. Which will no doubt enrage all tedious monitors who got so many posts deleted earlier on this thread.

So presumably blatant cheating is not considered disrespectful.

So presumably blatant cheating is not considered disrespectful?

Sacred caste innit. Excused from the normal conventions of society, sport and fair play in favour of self centred indulgence.

It's been noted that the BBC aren't even covering this on their website. Outright ignorance or outright censorship, I know which one I believe is true.

The Times & Telegraph both closed their comments I noticed - looks like the sheer weight of negative public opinion needed censoring 🙄

To get anywhere near the top of any sport a child has to be purely focussed on that particular sport, from the age of about six onwards. That means missing out on just about every other aspect of their childhood. And even then, let’s face it, the chances of ultimate success are minuscule. IMO sport should be for fun and to keep fit and healthy.

I would like to see this plastered all over the BBC. We'd soon see an end to #BeKind if the general public realised. 50 TW cyclists? So much for this-never-happens.

My peaking in the whole subject of trans was about a year ago at a prestigious time trial road race meet where Emily Bridges and another male cyclist pushed the winning female cyclist to Bronze, and effectively every other female competitor down two places.

I have no idea if the Bronze medallist, and every other female cyclist, had prize money and competitive opportunities reduced or even eliminated, prize money, prestige, opportunities to excel.

I do know the Bronze medallist went on Twitter that day to castigate what she called transphobic comments criticising (in so many words) "my beloved new female competitors".

A year on, that peaking is kept simmering by stories like this. But when you delve into cycling, you see a culture of absolute cheating, doping, and rampant misogyny.

It's quite something for me personally to feel ever more distant from the new "liberal" mindset. I was a liberal myself once, I guess. It's hard to remember when as this infantilising anti Enlightenment movement has been ramping up for many years now. I wish I knew what any sort of solutions might be.

If I had a daughter who has real talent and drive in cycling, and she was crying her eyes out at this story, just what would I be telling her, assuming I didn't want to lie to her?

Post edited by MNHQ

It's not on the BBC website. This is a scandal. The BBC happy to be in on this.

I know. It's absolutely grim.

I would have brisk words for any girl crying over this before it's affected her directly tbh. I would be ABSOLUTELY clear that I didn't think this was right and that I would campaign for her rights. I might also tell her about Marie José Martinez Patiño, an athlete with the VSD of androgen insensitivity syndrome, who was raised female, suffered various indignities in trying to compete as a woman and who was on the IOC 2003 committee that started this entire process by saying that male people could compete in female sex classes in sport. I think it's important to understand other people's suffering while also being clear about unintended consequences of trying to impose single answers.

This appeared about 50 mins ago:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cycling/65456752

OK thats a really good piece. Big hand to the Beeb.

The Telegraph has a brilliant new article about this from their chief sports writer demanding that the sports bodies act now before this hits the Olympics & the Tour de France. So many of the comments below are incandescent :

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cycling/2023/05/02/trans-cyclists-have-olympics-in-sights-no-one-can-stop-them/

Not really. No mention at all that Killip is male. It's all "transgender women" and "she". There will be plenty of readers who interpret that article to mean that Killip is a female who identifies as a man, and therefore takes testosterone. But in order to compete in the female category has to keep their testosterone to an agreed level in order mot to be accused of doping.

What I like is the quotes from more than one female athlete and the description of consistent campaigning. So often these stories are written over and over as if nothing like this has ever happened before.

Inga Thompson’s criticism features quite a lot in that BBC article:

American three-time Olympian Inga Thompson said the UCI - cycling's global governing body - was "killing off women's cycling".

Thompson told the Telegraph she expected Killips to "potentially go on" to compete in the Tour de France Femmes and the Paris Olympics, adding that "...women are just quietly walking away. They think, 'Why bother, if it's not fair?'".

And Alison Sydor:

Canada's Olympic silver medallist Alison Sydor also criticised Killips' participation, saying it was "no different functionally than doping".

True. In that respect, yes, a good article.

I'm just so frustrated by the deliberately confusing language of this ideology.

What a smug pathetic cheat.

Well said