The US swimmer Lia Thomas, who rose to global prominence after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a NCAA college title in March 2022, has lost a legal case against World Aquatics at the court of arbitration for sport – and with it any hopes of making next month’s Paris Olympics.
The 25-year-old also remains barred from swimming in the female category after failing to overturn rules introduced by swimming’s governing body in the summer of 2022, which prohibit anyone who has undergone “any part of male puberty” from the female category.
Thomas had argued that those rules should be declared “invalid and unlawful” as they were contrary to the Olympic charter and the World Aquatics constitution.
However, in a 24-page decision, the court concluded that Thomas was “simply not entitled to engage with eligibility to compete in WA competitions” as someone who was no longer a member of US swimming.
The news was welcomed by World Aquatics, who hailed it as “a major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sport”.
I’m not impugning anyone in any way with this comment but the very best biologically female athletes in the world, literal World Record setting Olympians, in many cases aren’t fast enough to compete with High School boys.
This is an even worse outcome than “Top 10% female athletes…” because this is the top 1% of female athletes, the crème de la crème, compared to the top *under age male *athletes.
There’s a lot of events, such as 100m to 800m sprints, where the female Olympians not only lose they can’t even qualify for the race!
In other events, swimming in particular, the biologically female Olympic Champions set World Record times…that were beaten by High School Boys.
You can follow the links to the raw data and do the math yourself if you want a precision answer but there’s no real question that the Top 10% of biologically female athletes, the Olympians, would lose to the Top 10% of biologically male athletes 80% of the time or more.