Thomas pulled away in the final 150 yards to win in 4:33.24.
“I try to ignore (negative comments) as much as I can. I try to focus on my swimming and what I need to do to prepare for the races and block everything else,” Thomas told ESPN after the race.
There were several taunts from the audience in the hall, with one person shouting “scammer” when Thomas was giving her an interview.
“It means the world is here,” Thomas said.
Her time was the fastest of the NCAA season, but well behind the 4:24.06 NCAA record set by 10-time Olympian Kathy Ledecky. Thursday, about 1.75 seconds behind Thomas. Texas freshman and Olympic silver medalist Erica Sullivan, who battled Thomas for the lead for most of the race, came in third. 100 yard freestyle on Saturday. With the win, Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win a DI title in any sport. Ceci Telfer became the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA title when she won the Division II championship in the women’s 400m hurdles. when she set NCAA season-leading results in the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle races. At the Ivy League Women’s Championship last month, she won the 100, 200 and 500 yard freestyle races. Along with the success came criticism over whether trans women should be allowed to participate in women’s sports. Her face has been prominently shown on Fox News and on right-wing news sites critical of society’s changing views on sex and gender.
Some of her Penn teammates also took issue with her involvement. Last month, an anonymous letter written on behalf of 16 of her 40 Penn teammates criticized what they saw as her “unfair advantage”, saying they supported her gender transition from the pool, but not necessarily in it.
In response, over 300 current and former swimmers, collegiate and elite, signed their names to an open letter defending Thomas’s ability to compete. One of those signatories was Sullivan, her closest competitor in Thursday’s 500 Free Preliminaries.
“I was fortunate to be welcomed with open arms in the swimming community when I came out as gay,” Sullivan said in a statement. “Only with my personal good experience of going out and feeling all the love and support in my swimming community, I feel that [Lia] deserves the same.”
What Thomas said
Thomas previously told the SwimSwam podcast that she realized she became transgender in the summer of 2018, but kept it a secret for fear that coming out would make her unable to swim.
“I struggled, my mental health was not very good. There was a lot of anxiety, basically I just felt like I was locked in my body. It didn’t agree,” she said.
The NCAA currently requires trans female athletes to complete one year of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) in order to be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Thomas said she began HRT in May 2019 and became transgender in the fall and was approved by the NCAA to enter the women’s field. Through an Ivy rep, she refused to speak to CNN during the Ivy championships. She spoke to Sports Illustrated earlier this month to defend her ability to compete.
“The very simple answer is that I am not a man,” she said. “I am a woman, so I belong to the women’s team. Transgender people deserve the same respect as any other athlete.”
Since then, the NCAA has adopted a series of stricter rules that require elite trans female athletes to complete HRT for three years and prove to a panel of medical experts that they have no competitive advantage over cisgender women. These rules will be phased in over the coming seasons.
Jamiel Lynch of CNN contributed to this report.