Triathlon becomes the first British sport to ban ALL trans women from competing in female events

The culture wars have long been brewing. The question of trans participation in professional sports is just of a hot topic across the pond as it is in the US.

Former prime minister Boris Johnson was quoted saying several months back:

“I don’t think that biological males should be competing in female sporting events. And maybe that’s a controversial thing … but it just seems to me to be sensible.”

 

He expressed this following an interesting case in British Cycling.

The sport’s governing authority in the UK said that it had voted in favor of an “immediate suspension” of its current policy, which it said was “unfair on all women riders.”

Decision came days after world cycling’s governing body ruled cyclist Emily Bridges couldn’t compete at the National Omnium Championships in the UK.

Now Triathlon is following suit.

It has become the first sport to ban all trans women from competing in female events and an elite and grassroots level.

British Triathlon are instead changing their men’s category to ‘open’, which all trans athletes can enter – another first by a national governing body.

The new policy comes into force in January and replaces the old guidelines set in 2018, which allowed trans women to compete against females if they had suppressed their testosterone.

‘We concluded that triathlon is a gender-affected sport and that means that athletes who were born male have an advantage over athletes who were born female and this advantage is significant in swim, bike and run,’ said British Triathlon chief executive Andy Salmon. ‘We also concluded that physiological advantages are retained by testosterone suppression.

‘The new policy will require two categories – a female category, which will be open to athletes who are female sex at birth, and an open category, which will be open to all athletes, including men and transgender athletes.

‘For international competition, only athletes who are female sex at birth will be eligible to represent Great Britain, England, Scotland or Wales in female competition.

‘We believe this is the right policy for our sport in Great Britain. We are incredibly proud and precious about our tradition, and our key principle of gender equity, and that is why fairness in our sport is so important.

‘We have taken strong legal advice and believe our policy is legally robust.’

British Triathlon’s announcement comes a week after Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries called a trans summit, urging all sports governing bodies to ban trans athletes from competing against women.

Salmon said he was ‘not aware’ of any elite level transgender triathletes in Britain – but he added: ‘We didn’t want to be a governing body that waited for that to be a problem before we tried to fix it.