Nicole Russell: Only Women Can Save Women’s Sports

Yale’s Iszak Henig, left, and Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas, right, dive into the water at the start of 100-yard freestyle final at the Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at Harvard University, Saturday, Feb. 19, in Cambridge, Mass. Henig, who is transitioning to male but hasn’t begun hormone treatments yet, is swimming for the Yale women’s team and Thomas, who is transitioning to female, is swimming for the Penn women’s team.

Women get pummeled when biological men living as women are allowed to compete against them in sports .

Another example of this all too familiar truth came on April 30. A transgender cyclist, Austin Killips, finished first place in the women’s category of the Tour of the Gila, a professional cycling race held in southwest New Mexico . The race has been held every year for the last 36 years. But this year’s outcome serves as a reminder that the only way to ensure that athletic competition is fair for girls and women is for them to demand that sports organizations change their regulations.

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The Tour of the Gila, for example, is specifically regulated and sanctioned by UCI, Union Cycliste International. The UCI has finally admitted it has heard the “concerns” of female athletes upset by Killips’s win. It will decide in August about new rules for transgender athletes’ participation in future events. This is small progress.

Even Michael Engleman, race director of the Tour of the Gila, wasn’t happy about the results. He told the Telegraph, “This could kill the sport, I know how hard it is to get people to put money into a women’s team, at any level and now they’re asking, ‘Is this something I can touch? What if an athlete says the wrong thing?’ This is harming the sport. It’s a reality that somebody has to speak about.”

The UCI’s regulations allow biological men to race with women as long as their testosterone levels are at a certain level for about two years. But even a lower testosterone level doesn’t negate puberty. Killips has a significant physiological advantage over biologically female racing peers. Killips won with a time of 3:07:16, 89 seconds ahead of second-place winner Marcela Prieto. Prieto is a Mexican cyclist who has placed first, second, and third in multiple races. Incredibly, Killips bested Prieto despite the fact that the cyclist has only been cycling since 2019. Not only did Killips steal the win from Prieto. That win came with $35,000 in prize money. The difference between Prieto and a hefty savings account was 89 seconds. It’s a lawful but moral theft.

Fortunately, women aren’t standing idle. Three-time Olympian Inga Thompson tweeted: “It is time for Women Cyclist to start protesting @UCI_cycling Policy. Start taking a knee at the starting lines. Team managers need to speak up and protect their riders. Hold signs at every race ‘Save Women’s Sports.'”

The trend for transgender women to pick up a sport and play against women is so full of hubris. It’s incredible that more sports organizations, journalists, and world-class female athletes don’t call it out. Of course, that silence reflects a widespread fear that speaking up will induce a fierce backlash. Few people want to be labeled a bigot, a TERF, or worse.

Still, the only ones who can stop this unfairness are girls and women.

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Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She is an opinion columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.