Stunning and Brave

NCAA Swimming Championships make the news for all the wrong reasons

One of the biggest stories this spring was Pennsylvania swimmer “Lia” Thomas who was breaking records while bending gender norms as an openly trans athlete.

A Sports Illustrated cover story (Lia Thomas interview: The story of the Penn swimmer at the heart of the transgender athlete debate - Sports Illustrated) heralded the record breaker, and a new martyr for the woke brigade was made.

Weekly updates of Thomas’s races led to this week’s NCAA Division 1 meet where - surprise - Thomas easily won the 500 Freestyle.

Well the national press can have their glass shattering celebratory moment.

Meanwhile, I’m pretty much flat out disgusted.

Title IX and women’s sports have barely lasted two generations before men found a way that they could worm themselves in… receiving accolades that they could not earn competing with their own gender.

I’ve heard my entire life how important Title IX was in the development of women and girls. That female exclusive sports were so important to the development of women’s character and competition that it had to be codified in law and enforced with the full might of the federal government.

My, how quickly things change in this Brave New World.

And with so little discussion or discourse.

Obviously, I have a little bit of a vested interest in swimming after 20 years devoted to the sport, both as a High School and summer league coach and competing at the national level.

I was swimming at that national level during the Russian and Chinese women’s swimming doping scandals of the early 90s. That scandal involved steroids, namely testosterone and other synthetic versions meant to strengthen both physical stature and endurance.

It was obvious who was cheating to all of us on the pool deck, whether or not US Swimming wanted to recognize it.

Just as it’s obvious what is happening in swimming now.

Excuse me if I don’t celebrate Lia, who for three years was swimming as William Thomas on the men’s team, and not making finals (usually the top 8 or 16 depending on the meet).

I’m not going to celebrate someone who I see as a bully. One whose physical development included levels of testosterone that biological women would have to cheat to achieve.

From the very first moment the public, and the rest of the women’s team were forced to celebrate this supposed brave choice.

With signed PR letters to prove it.

Those who didn’t agree, both on the team and off, have faced calls of bigotry, transphobia, and worse. (My favorite was misogyny… Quite ironic)

Thomas’s teammates who didn’t agree, some of whom are on scholarships, have voiced their concerns, but anonymously, for fear of retaliation and cancellation.

We can’t talk about the biological realities of puberty. About the physiological differences between men and women in elite competition. And we can’t talk about the absolute farce of sport’s governing bodies who go along with this nonsense in the hopes of not getting on the wrong side of a Twitter mob.

This story has superseded a college team, a whole swim season, and now the entirety of NCAA swimming as a body. It has become a celebration of one transgender person, rather than the sport and entirety of competitors that it supposedly serves.

These women who have been working their whole lives for this one swim meet will now not get noticed for their accomplishments. In any event. Or for breaking any record.

And we’re all just supposed to be okay with it.

Not going to happen. Sorry, not sorry.

Lia Thomas can have her 15 minutes of fame. But this era in sport and history will always have an awfully big asterisk next to it.

I chose to stand with biological women, especially women in my sport. Girls who work hard to be their best, and compete against the best. Fairly.

I see the competitors as the ones who are stunning and brave. The girls who speak both on and off the record, who are standing up for themselves and their sport. The women who are speaking up for the girls who are just starting out in sports and looking at all of us now.

The destruction of our modern order continues, rapidly. It’s time to start asking yourself what is going to replace it.