This weekend, the world finally woke up to the realization that politically correct monsters who don’t give a damn about anything other than promoting far-left ideology are perilously close to destroying women’s sport forever.
The absurd image of University of Pennsylvania swimmer Leah Thomas — the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA title in the women’s 500-yard freestyle — towering over the biologically placed second-place finisher while booing from the Atlanta crowd sums up the sheer insanity of our time.
Especially since second place went to Virginia’s Emma Weyant, a silver medalist at the recent Tokyo Olympics, who still finished 1.75 seconds behind Leah.
Leah Thomas — the first transgender athlete to win an NCAA title in the women’s 500 yard dash — towered over her rivals as she was booed by the crowd in Atlanta.
The 22-year-old climbed from 554th place among men to first place among women.
While I don’t blame Leah personally because the dangerous NCAA rules allowing transgender athletes to compete after just a year of hormone therapy obviously need to be used, there must now be a reckoning as the entire women’s sports world comes together before it’s too late. .
As I understand it, there is a very simple solution to this quagmire: trans athletes need to be told in no uncertain terms that they cannot compete outside of their biological sex.
After all, all female athletes make huge sacrifices to their lifestyle. In the future, anyone in the same position as Leah must accept that their transition should be delayed until AFTER their competitive career, with rules ensuring that all athletes must compete with their biological sex at birth, regardless of event. sport or competition.
It may seem cruel, but it’s not too different from many of the top athletes who make the heartbreaking decision to put off becoming a mom for a few years before retiring (although I admit that some of them may return after giving birth).
Am I unfair?
Well, I knew I had to ask Caitlyn Jenner, the most famous transgender woman in the world who won an Olympic gold medal for Bruce.
She recently told me, “I think, to be honest, they should change the rules. We need a fair playing field. And right now, if we allow it, it’s not fair.”
The leftist media has predictably and ridiculously attempted to brand Caitlyn as transphobic, which is a real head-scratcher considering her own transition.
But Caitlyn rightly sees the Leah Thomas fiasco as adding to the resentment towards the trans community.
Caitlyn Jenner rightly sees the Leah Thomas fiasco as adding to the resentment towards the trans community.
“I strongly support women’s sports. We cannot allow biological boys to compete with women. This is bad for the trans community,” she answered honestly.
And she went even further than me, personally criticizing Leah, who, in her words, “was on the men’s team” just a few years ago, and now “overtakes women by two laps”, for irresponsibility for continuing to compete despite disagreements. .
Caitlin explained, “When you make the transition and go through this, you have to take responsibility and be honest. I don’t know why she does it. I 100% respect her right to live a real life, but I don’t think she’s responsible for that.”
I admit that it is somewhat suspicious that athletes like Thomas and New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard make the decision to switch and apply for the women’s competition AFTER it became clear that they would not succeed in the men’s competition.
Hubbard, 43, became the first openly transgender athlete to compete in the Olympics last summer.
Meanwhile, Leah competed on the UPenn men’s swim team under the name Will for three years before moving on in 2019, but didn’t even make the NCAA top 500.
And without a doubt, Leah has huge physical advantages due to her biology.
As British swimmer Sharron Davies, a staunch defender of women’s sports, wrote in The Mail on Sunday: “Leah has been taking testosterone-suppressing drugs for the required last 12 months as required by NCAA rules, but no amount of these drugs can reverse physical benefits of male puberty.
“She has more upper body strength and significantly more muscle mass than a woman of the same weight and height. She has more lung capacity, better VO2 uptake, different bone density, she’s almost 6ft 4in, and she has big arms and legs that act like paddles.”
The problem is that when you speak up for female athletes, you will immediately be branded as a transphobe.
The liberal media doesn’t want to properly cover the story, and the NBC Today show has even been accused of retouching Leah’s on-screen image to make her look more feminine.
But when you dig a little deeper into Leah’s time at UPenn, things get even more troubling.
In January, one of her teammates told Sean Cohen of that they were “embarrassed” to share a dressing room with her because “Leah still has male body parts and is still attracted to women.”
Leah’s teammate added, “Several swimmers have lifted it several times. But we were basically told that we can’t ostracize Leah without leaving her in the locker room and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, otherwise we can’t use our own locker room.”
Hungarian-born swimmer Reka György, whom Leah eliminated from the final, wrote a furious letter to the NCAA condemning the decision.
Then there is Hungarian-born swimmer Reka György, who was eliminated from the final by Leah and has now written a furious letter to the NCAA denouncing the decision.
“This is my last college meeting and I feel disappointed. It feels like last place was taken away from me due to the NCAA decision to allow someone who is not a biological woman to compete, ”she wrote.
The letter continued: “Each competition that transgender athletes competed in was one place away from biological women throughout the competition. I ask the NCAA to take the time to think about all the other biological women in swimming, to try to think about how they would feel if they were in our place. Make the right changes to our sport and for a better future in swimming.”
One must be voluntarily blind in order not to feel the inner pain and disappointment of the River.
And I say all this as a big fan of women’s sports and athletes.
More from Dan Wootton for MailOnline…
As one of the official supporters of the London Pulse Netball Club, I know how much harder women have to work to be at their peak every week, overcoming menstrual problems that biological men don’t affect.
The new U.S. swim policy is that athletes must record low testosterone levels for 36 months to compete in the women’s category, a stricter rule than the NCAA requirements.
In a recent statement, they stated: “Swimming USA is a firm believer in inclusiveness and the opportunity for all athletes to swim in a manner consistent with their gender identity and expression. We also strongly believe in the fairness of competition and, like many, we do our best to learn and educate ourselves about the right balance in this space.”
But this statement sums it all up: there is simply no place for inclusiveness in competitive women’s sports when it comes to allowing biological males to compete, no matter how insulting the wake-up crowd.
As the International Olympic Committee refuses to take a hard line on trans athletes, there must be a popular uprising before we risk permanently marginalizing female athletes and turning women’s sport into an under-par competition for biological men.
Even though she doesn’t break any rules, Leah Thomas is already leading us down that slippery slope.