By Curt_Anderson June 8, 2022 11:10 am Category: Sports (5.0 from 1 vote) Rules of the Post Write A New Article How To Post Here Rate this article (5=best, 0=poor)

I mentioned on these pages that our good friends' daughter is the US female cyclo-cross champion and a professional bicycle racer. She recently missed making the podium in a race, taking fourth place behind a transgender female. A few years ago the third place finisher was an 18 year old male. That's 18 years of male muscle and body development.

There is significant prize money in bike racing. There is a big monetary difference between third and fourth place. So the issue of fairness is not merely academic.

Some here can speak from experience on the subject, but I understand that transitioning involves hormone therapy. We have all read about athletes being suspended from their sports because of detectable amounts of banned substances in their blood. Some of it is probably intentional hormone doping. Some athletes may have innocently ingested the hormones from food.

"Shelby Houlihan, the middle-distance runner who currently holds two U.S. records, says she's been banned from the Tokyo Olympics after testing positive for the steroid nandrolone. Houlihan says she's clean and is blaming the test result on a pork burrito she got from a food truck." --NPR

Performance enhancers are banned because competition is supposed to be a contest of natural abilities. Even drugs not considered performance enhancers are banned. US sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson was suspended and missed the Olympics after testing positive for marijuana. I wonder if the various athletic associations hold trans athletes to the same standards and scrutiny as other athletes.

(QZ)Rather than being evidence an athlete intentionally used a performance-enhancing substance to cheat, however, these results are more likely to be the result of contaminated foods, supplements, or medicines.

Even more concerning is the evidence presented this week by German journalist Hajo Seppelt and the ARD documentary team in Doping Top Secret: GUILTY, which showed how athletes can potentially be sabotaged through casual contact.

Cited and related links:

1. qz.com
2. frontiersin.org
3. npr.org

Comments Start Below

by Donna on June 8, 2022 11:39 am To answer your topic title, emphatically YES! The problem is male puberty, which due to the torrential flood of testosterone that happens, creates irreversible changes to the body. Taking estrogen after those changes have happened doesn't reverse them. There's minor reduction of muscle strength, but everything else remains unaltered. by Donna on June 8, 2022 11:42 am Of course I meant to type "male puberty", not "make". by Curt_Anderson on June 8, 2022 11:57 am Donna, As you can see I had already exercised my editorial prerogative and corrected your typo. Here is a story about another trans cyclist, not the same one I alluded to above. Just by looks alone, Molly Cameron would seem to be formidable competition in any female athletic contest. bicycling.com by Donna on June 8, 2022 12:45 pm I noticed right after I posted that correction that you corrected my typo. Thank you. Feel free to correct any obvious typos you see in my posts. I looked at that pic. Lia Thomas is even more obvious in her male skeletal anatomy. Proponents of transwomen athletes competing along side cis women athletes point out that there are cis women athletes who have male-appearing bone structure, which is true. But generally speaking, male bodies also have larger lungs, heads, hands and feet than females of the same height, which often gives male bodiea an advantage in sports. I think the line should be drawn at whether or not the transgirl/woman athlete has gone through male puberty, because that's when all of the irreversible physical changes happen. If not for transwomen athletes being relatively few in number, male bodies would dominate women's sports and therefore ruin women's athletics. After all, the whole reason we have separate athletics for men and women is to give women a fair chance to win competitions. Go To Top

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