It is unsurprising to those with a clear view of the genesis and progression of the current transgender orthodoxy (CTO) that the perception of large numbers of natal males entering female sports, plus growing concerns about paediatric transition framed both as enabling child sexual abuse, and an attack on parental rights, would become the main foci of a powerful right wing and social conservative backlash.
The abject failure of much of what passes for the left in the neo-liberal era, to see the potential for such a backlash is depressing enough, but that many on the left have blamed feminists for both the right wing coat-tailing of the issues and the social conservative backlash, adds insult to injury.
What follows focusses on the issue of transgender riders in women’s cycling.
Making the headlines
The latest trans sports imbroglio is centred around a transgender cyclist having won the 5-stage Tour of the Gila, (1) a victory that has resulted in 27-year-old Austin Killips, a relative newcomer to both cycling and to transgender identity, being tipped for a place on the US women’s cycling team in next year’s Paris Olympics.
Killips initially took up the sport of cyclocross in 2019, and switched into road cycling, racing for the Amy D Foundation team. (2) There’s no doubting a competitive drive that was on display in what looked like a deliberate barging of fellow competitor, Hannah Arensman, in an attempt to push her off her bike in the 2022 US Cyclocross National Championships. Being relegated to fourth place, and there being two transgender cyclists in the top five riders, precipitated Arensman’s retirement from the sport. (3)
Despite an intense competitive drive, it’s fair to say that the only way Killips was ever going to stand on a winner’s podium in an elite cycling race, was to compete against women.
The wider significance of a transgender cyclist’s victory in a race which is minor league in the UCI international calendar, should not be overstated, but it may be important for what it signals for the future of women’s sport, and for professional women’s cycling in particular.
Cycling, a niche for everyone
Cycling has a huge range of events to choose from, most of which are Olympic sports, and all of which attract sponsorship. Road racing ranges from multi stage races, to one day classics, time trials, and criteriums. On the track there’s a range of team and individual sprint and endurance races, and there other disciplines like cross country mountain and downhill mountain biking, BMX, gravel racing and cyclocross.
Women’s cycling has struggled for parity in a sport that was once completely dominated by men, so much so, it took 88 years after the first men’s road race at the Olympics in 1896 for a women’s race to be introduced. (4)
Eleven years ago, then UCI president, Pat McQuaid, declared that women’s cycling had not progressed sufficiently to warrant mandating a minimum wage for female cyclists. A year later, his successor, Brian Cookson, said it would be introduced within a year; it was finally introduced in 2020 with incremental increases aimed at parity with men by 2023.
Suffice it to say, no elite woman' salary comes close to €6m that UAE currently pays Tadej Pogacar; AnneMiek Van Vleuten's annual salary with Mobistar is €250k.
In 2014, Nairo Quintana received €200,000 for winning the Giro d'Italia, while Marianne Vos received €535 for winning the women’s race. There is still not full parity in prize money and there’s a vast gap in commercial sponsorship but this year’s Tour of the Gila did see equal prizes for the women’s and men’s races.
It’s no accident that more transgender cyclists who went through a male puberty, and many of whom were only moderately successful as men, are entering women’s elite and professional events just as women are beginning to somewhat level the cycling course.
It’s also no accident that the sport’s largely male hierarchy can get its institutional head around transgender riders in women’s events more easily than it can pay parity or any of the other discriminatory facets of the sport.
Fairness versus inclusion
Sports psychologists will attest to how important self-belief is in any athlete, especially those subjected to the intensity of elite competition. Male humans all grow up with the knowledge that when they mature they will be, on average, bigger, stronger, and faster than a comparable female.
Such a grounding may confer a competitive advantage in athletes who grew up as male, went through male puberty and competed as men, when they compete against women.
It’s well known that in almost all sports males have a significant average performance advantage (APA) over females. However hard women train, whatever advances are made in sex-specific training and coaching, that APA remains intact.
In cycling, the APA is around 10%. A measure of this is to be found in the comparative times of Annemiek Van Vleuten and Simon Yates on the 11.9k kilometres and 1,200m of vertical ascent of the Monte Zoncolan in stage 9 of the 2014 Giro Rosa and the Giro d'Italia. Van Vleuten’s time was 48 minutes 3 seconds; Yates was 40 minutes 4 seconds.
A more accurate measure is the world hour cycling record which removes most of the variables. For men, in completely comparable Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) mandated conditions and using UCI mandated equipment, the current record for men is 56.792km while for women it is 49.254km.
The UCI initially adopted the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) 2015 revised standard for trans athletes of an upper limit of 10nmols/L of serum testosterone for 1 year prior to competition, a level that is four times higher than the top of the female standard reference range (SRR). (5)
That disparity was justified by trans lobbyists and advocates with such arguments as: a small minority of women who have an endocrine disorder such as PCOS have higher levels of T than the top of the female SRR; a genetically male body needs a certain level of androgens to maintain wider health; and, any residual advantage is just another in the range of naturally occurring athletic advantages, such as height. (6)
What is seldom commented on except by women, is that this is an additional athletic advantage which only women are being forced to accept. Natal females entering men’s sports, even with an automatic therapeutic use exemption (TUE) for unlimited use of exogenous testosterone, do not pose the same risk to male athletes.
Opponents of the entry of natal males into female sports, pointed out that not only was the level and the timing of the reduction grossly unfair, any reduction in serum testosterone ignores the retention of the muscular-skeletal and cardio-vascular advantages gained by being genetically male and having gone through male puberty, plus the psychological advantages of having competed in male events. (7)
After challenges to this compromise solution, the IOC threw up its hands and left it to individual international sporting bodies to make their own rules.
Some international and national sporting bodies e.g., World Athletics and World Aquatics, have since moved away from allowing transgender athletes who’ve gone through male puberty, to compete in women’s events, but the UCI and USA Cycling (USAC) adopted a compromise position of a reduction to no more than 2.5 nmols/L for two years prior to competition.
Androgens rule, or do they?
In 2006 the cycling world watched in amazement as US cyclist, Floyd Landis, recovered after being dropped on a mountain stage in the Tour de France, to power up the next day’s climb, not just convincingly winning the stage but recovering all the time he had lost in the general classification the previous day. He went on to win the GC but was stripped of his title when it was found he had doped with exogenous testosterone.
We all know how far competitive athletes will go in order to win. We also know that for male and female athletes, exogenous testosterone is a powerful performance enhancer, which is why it is banned, and why anything outside of the upper levels of the SRR is likely to lead to suspicion based testing which can now detect exogenous testosterone.
It’s also well established that the muscular-skeletal and cardio-vascular changes to the male body during puberty grant an average performance advantage (APA) over females in most sports, and in ALL sports in which speed and power are in play.
There is a growing body of evidence that all those post-pubertal changes are not lost even when natal males have lowered their endogenous testosterone to the top of the female SRR of 0.5 to 2.4 nanomoles per litre (nm/L) compared to a range of 10 to 35 nm/L for men, even with a major reduction of testosterone for two years prior to competition.
If, as has been argued, there is a statistical over-representation in elite sports of female athletes with an undiagnosed 46XY DSD who have male levels of androgens but compete androgen insensitivity, that would suggest male APA does not rest on serum testosterone levels alone.
The Dirty Riever, a largely off-road gravel race in the UK, was recently brought to public attention by Cara Dixon, a trans rider in the 20 to 29 age category, winning the overall women’s 200km event by almost an hour over the second placed woman overall, who was racing in the 30-39 age category. Dixon beat the second placed woman in the 20-29 category by more than two and a half hours.
A man, racing in the 60-69 age category beat the fastest woman overall by an hour and a half, and he beat the fastest natal female in the 20-29 age category by more than 3 hours.
There are of course a huge range of variables in play behind those race results but they support two things:
a) the fact that testosterone is a major player in performance in respect of both power and endurance; and,
b) it is not the sole component of the APA which post-pubertal natal males have over post-pubertal natal females.
The long-term retention of varying degrees of APA, even with full surgical reassignment, is supported by the performance of cyclist, Natalie van Gogh, who transitioned at the age of 30, and rode as a professional for four different women’s teams between 2012-2021, i.e., between the ages of 38 and 46. Despite being far older than any of the other elite female cyclists in the field, Van Gogh still gained 18 top-ten places, including 3 first places.
Other important evidence of serum testosterone being just one, albeit a very important, component of male APA is the fact that some men who have abnormally low testosterone have been highly successful in elite sports.
Chris Boardman, a gifted British time trial and prologue specialist who won numerous races and broke the men’s world hour record three times, has an abnormally low endogenous testosterone level which meant he was unable to recover as well as other riders from the rigours of stage racing.
The UCI refused to grant him a therapeutic use exemption (TUE) to take prescription exogenous testosterone, despite him having osteopenia and thus being at a far higher risk of severe fractures in a fall. He eventually had to give up cycling in order to take testosterone to slow his bone loss.
It’s interesting that a natal female trans cyclist, under existing UCI rules, is granted an automatic TUE to take exogenous testosterone in order to masculinise, and there’s no stated upper limit on how much is an acceptable level although anything too far over the upper male limit might attract attention as well as cause serious health problems. (8)
British Cycling is currently considering following World Athletics and World Aquatics in not allowing a natal male who has gone through male puberty to compete in women’s events, and it may follow Triathlon in establishing a natal female and an open category.
The UCI’s current standard for transgender athletes to compete in women’s events was a significant downward shift from the IOC’s arbitrary 2015 standard. In reaction to the Gila result, the UCI’s medical director initially remained adamant that there was no intention to move from the current standard. However, in the face of a growing backlash to the win, and the suggestion that it positions Killips for selection for the US Women’s Olympic team, they are now backpedalling.
Real threat or yet more ideological hot air?
A lot is talked about all this signalling the end of women’s sport. Some of the claims use the same sorts of sweeping statements, hyperbole, and inflamed rhetoric as have been and are deployed by trans rights activists and lobbyists to push for trans inclusion. Both extremes are now highly politically motivated and both sets of arguments and data should be treated with caution as the terrain is even more of an ideological minefield.
The relaxation of entry requirements, including effective self-identification at lower national governed races (in the US, Category 3-5 riders do not need to prove hormone levels), and races that are completely based on self-identification has seen an increase in the numbers of natal males entering women’s events.
Attempts to balance fairness, safety, and inclusion have seen some people advocate for a removal of the sex category in sport entirely, and going over to a Paralympics’ type of weighting of advantages. This would not only be extraordinarily clunky and throw up just as many contradictions, it would serve to draw a veil over the reality that yet again women and girls would lose out.
I have listed below all the trans cyclists I can find in the anglophone world in all the many different cycling events, and frankly there aren’t many in total, and there are fewer still who currently pose a real threat to elite women cyclists in any of cycling’s many events – at the moment. (9)
The only truly world class cyclist known to have transitioned, Robert Miller, came out in 2017 as Philippa York. That was long after retirement, and after the 2015 revision of the 2004 Stockholm Consensus and in the context of the spectacular rise in acceptance of gender self-identification.
It’s interesting to speculate whether Millar would have transitioned had it been possible, and how the current UCI standard of 2.5 nmols/L for two years would have affected Phillipa York’s performance in the women’s events relative to that of Robert Millar as a male rider.
Whilst that is just speculation, one thing is certain – the status and financial differentials between women’s and men’s cycling are still such that world class male cyclists are highly unlikely to transition when they are in still the running in male events.
There are as many imponderables in all of this as there are hyperbolic assertions but the point for me is, it’s not just about elite, professional sport, and the money and status it generates, it’s about the grassroots of the sport.
One thing is absolutely certain; damage the roots and chances are you will kill the plant.
To pee or not to pee
One final and slightly tongue-in-cheek point about peeing and bottom hygiene. As all cyclists know, care of the butt when you spend hours in the saddle is analogous to “no hoof, no horse”.
It’s also incredibly important for riders to stay well hydrated but the more you drink, the more you may need to pee – and therein lies the anatomical rub for women.
Male anatomy allows men to pee while staying on the bike, and there are informal race conventions which prohibit attacking the race leaders if they are having a pee. Women have to stop to pee.
Most elite cyclists these days wear bib shorts, the bib part is under a top, and in cold weather they may wear leg warmers. As female riders don’t want to have to dismount, disrobe and squat, they dismount, pull one leg of their shorts aside and crouch just enough to direct the pee stream to the ground and not down the leg or into their shorts.
Thus, riders who have an in-built plumbing advantage, even if they don’t attack while the female race leaders have stopped to pee, could gain considerable ground on them. Too much of this male anatomical advantage in the peloton could see female riders holding on, or not drinking as much, neither of which is good for health.
Notes:
(1) The Gila is five-stage road race was added to the UCI American Tour in 2012 as a UCI classification 2.2 stage race meaning it restricts UCI professional continental teams to just two entries, which greatly reduces the level of competition. It was added to the Women’s UCI International tour in 2015.
(2) The Amy D foundation was set up in memory of US female cyclist, Amy Dombroski, to encourage and support young women through cycling. Tragically, Dombroski, an advocate for equal pay for women in professional cycling, was killed in 2013 when she was hit by a truck while training in Belgium.
(3) Arensman is religious, and it may be that the bad feeling between her and Killips is because of her anti-trans stance. She is party to a filing with the US Supreme Court aimed at banning natal males from women’s sport that is supported by a powerful right-wing lobby ostensibly aimed at protecting women’s sports but is evidence of the extent to which this issue is fuelling the religious and secular rights’ wider attacks on reproductive rights, and diverting attention away from more covert attacks on such things as labour rights.
(4) Having been dominated by men, cycling is set up for men in terms of training/coaching regimes, hierarchies etc. Women’s races are typically shorter and there are fewer competitors meaning smaller pelotons. Riding in a large group allows for a massive saving of energy; the bigger the peloton, the more opportunity to conserve energy. The shorter races may also mean that female racers spend more time relative to men in peak energy output which may have implications for training regimes, for recovery and for long term health.
(5) The 2004 Stockholm Consensus had allowed transwomen to enter women’s events in the Olympics if they had had full gender assignment surgery, i.e., they no longer produced any endogenous testosterone other than the minute amount produced by the adrenal glands. Due to lobbying, and roping in the situation of legally female athletes with a 46XY DSD, this was changed in 2015 to an upper limit of 10nmols/L of serum testosterone for 1 year prior to competition, i.e., athletes who had gained the APA gained in male puberty and who had competed as men, only had to reduce their testosterone level to four times the top of the standard reference range for women.
(6) Some women have abnormally high endogenous T levels which, medically, is regarded as a hormone imbalance, e.g., as a result of polycystic ovary syndrome, (PCOS). The possible over-representation at elite levels in some women’s sports of women with PCOS has been cited as proof that natal males who have transitioned, and who lower their T levels in order to compete in women’s events, have no innate average performance advantage. Some trans advocates even argue that because men typically have a larger, heavier body than women, transgender athletes who have had to lower their testosterone levels, are at an athletic disadvantage. Some, TRAs, like Veronica Ivy, argue that any restriction on androgens is an infringement of human rights.
(7) Women athletes with an undiagnosed 46XY DSD with complete androgen insensitivity will show high serum testosterone but their bodies are unable to respond to it. Their inclusion in women’s sports is roped in by trans lobbyists in support of trans inclusion.
(8) Trans lobbyists have argued that exogenous testosterone is a more potent performance enhancer than endogenous testosterone; if this is the case, it raises performance enhancement issues both for natal females competing as men, and for surgically transitioned natal males in women’s events for whom TUEs are decided on a case by case basis.
(9) Some of the following 51 are riders who have retired, no longer compete. I have underlined those who might feasibly compete at UCI elite or professional levels.
Taryn Askew: Competes in BMX.
Jillian Bearden: 45; won El Tour de Tucson in 2016. Raced with the pro women at the Colorado Classic. Masters national champion. Colorado state Champion. Hoped to make the 2020 US team.
Roxy Bombardier: 50s; ex-military; started racing as a woman in 2019; races cyclocross and gravel.
Emily Bridges: 21; in British Cycling development squad as a man; ID as trans in 2019 but a planned move into women’s cycling is blocked while British Cycling reviews its policy. Still races against women in races which are not sanctioned by British Cycling.
Molly Cameron: 46; Raced for many years against males at the elite level while IDing as trans. In independent, high-profile gravel races that allow self-ID, competes in those races against women. Transactivist.
Lilly Chant: 20s; competed as a man 2019/20 Southampton Uni Bike club; races as a woman in races not sanctioned by BC, e.g., Thundercrit.
Cara Dixon: 20s; won the women’s Dirty Riever in a time of 7.46; 2nd place overall was 53 minutes behind; 2nd place in the 20-29 age category was 2 hrs 37 behind. Trained to be an ultra-cyclist while still identifying as male and had a feature article written in The Radavist.
Sammy Rose Dobrozsi: 29; Raced (road and gravel) successfully as a man. Was welcomed racing with males while IDing as a woman. 2023 season racing as woman.
Michelle Dumaresque: 52; entered women’s downhill MTB May 2001 easily beating women; allowed by the UCI to continue competing despite complaints from women competitions. Wins were all contested but upheld. Won 2002 Canada Cup series qualified for national team. Represented Canada at World MTB champs not placed because of tech issues with bike. Won national champs in 2003 and 2004 but was not placed in the worlds.
Leia Genis: 25; USA Cycling Elite Track National Championship in Pennsylvania on July 27, Genis won second place in the Individual Pursuit event - stripped of place after not meeting new UCI standards.
Blake Hansen: 33; transitioned aged 25; races mountain bikes as a pro. Has been featured by numerous publications as a "rider to watch" as "breaking barriers" in mountain biking.
Sandy Hosey: 62; Races in Sol Squad, women’s team in Colorado. Gravel, road and cyclocross.
Veronica Ivy, aka Rachel Mackinnon: 41; took up track cycling & in 2018 became world masters’ champion; in 2019 broke the 200m sprint world record for females aged 34-39.
Tessa Johnson: Raced cyclocross and road at Clemson University. Raced in the women's cat 4/5's in 2022 (beginner) for Comrade Cycles and dominated the 2022 season in Chicago.
Dahron Johnson: 53; Races in women’s masters’ events; road and cyclocross.
Jordan Johnson: 34; Cat3 Canadian based in Colorado. Races road and cyclocross for Ride or Die Collective.
Andy Lee Jordan: Races road and cyclocross in the non-binary category and female category. Doesn't race in the male category.
Candace Kennedy-Hess: 69; masters’ races on road for Sturdy Girl Cycling.
Austin Killips: 27; ranked 35 in UCI cyclocross; took up cyclocross in 2019 as a woman. Took 3rd place at US national championships, beating Hannah Arensman. Came 3rd in the Gila in 2022, and took first place in 2023. 3rd at the US National Cyclocross Championships in the women's elite. Raced UCI World Cup in Europe.
Claire Law: 35; Races road, track, cyclocross, and mountain bike for Breakfast Racing. Self-described bad bike handler with good power numbers.
Jenna Lingwood: 42; Ranked 146 UCI cyclocross; Came 5th in US National Cyclocross Champs 2022. Women’s masters 40+ national cyclocross champion. Raced for many years with males without much success.
Anna Caterina Lisk: 48; started cycling aged 29 as Cat 5 male; transition 2015; races road. Arizona state champion, masters.
Elena McCready: 51; transitioned aged 47; Kiwi born, UK based road and cyclocross racer.
Kyo Zero Mars: 37; Cat 5; Road and track racer for R MacKinnon’s defunct team, Foxy Moxy Racing.
Harper Martinez: 30s; Raced as Herman in women’s category; member of Automatic elite road racing team.
Jacqueline Maunter: 41; cat 4; raced road & cyclocross as woman since 2017. Frame builder & recipient of Women Build Bikes grant.
Erica Miller: Club rider; races road, gravel, and cyclocross in Colorado.
Lesley Mumford: 40s; transitioned 2017; races gravel and mountain bike. 1st in field of 31 in the women's open at the Colorado Cup; 1st out of 31 (& a course record) at the Tennessee Pass Night Jam.
Christine Penn: 56; Races road for Sturdy Girl Cycling.
Lucy Rogers: 50s; Vet; Started racing as woman in 2019. UK road, gravel, and mountain bike racer. Wins and high placings in big fields.
Prim Rose: US bike messenger & beginner road racer for PDX Dream Team. After seeing two males on the extended podium at the Portland Criterium last season, it's Rose's goal to podium at this race in 2023.
Riley Claire Sato: Cyclocross; 7th in the elite women category at the Ontario 2022 provincial championships.
Ruth Seaman: 57; Cat3 road racer; racing since 2016. Set women's course record at the Pace Bend Ultra 12 Hour race at age of 55.
Tara Seplavy: 48; Mediocre racer for years as a male; slightly more successful against women since 2017; Cat3. Cycling journalist for Bicycling magazine & avid TERF blocker on Twitter.
Alex Showerman: 35; mountain biker, marketer; transitioned aged 31.
Evelyn Sifton: 29; Canadian road and track racer for Shadow Elite women's cycling team 2018/19
Natasha Smith: Raced elite road and track in the UK; ranked 88 in 2018. Masters record holder.
Bev Sorsby: Cat 2; Club rider; races road in the UK. Member of Women’s Cycling Sheffield.
Kenzie Statz: 40: Races road and mountain bike.
Sara Stearns: 70s; Masters 70+ national and world track champion; world record holder.
Addisyn Stout: Track and mountain bike racer.
Morgan Styer: 40s; Raced road and cyclocross through 2017 with Foxy Moxy. Was a mid-pack cat 4/5 male who became a successful cat 3 female ten years later.
Kristin Sundquist: 33; Raced in the nonbinary category at cyclocross nationals; claims to have a T level of .02nmol/l?) Was cat 2 in male cyclocross competition.
Tiffany Thomas: 46; took up cycling in 2018; won a criterium; pro racer for team LA Sweat.
Natalie van Gogh: 49; retired; transitioned 2005; rode pro 2012-2021.
Henrietta Watts (Henry): Races in the nonbinary category when the rules don’t allow for racing in the women’s category, otherwise races in the women’s category.
Kate Weatherly: 21; average male rider now dominating elite women’s downhill MTB in NZ; started hormone treatment at 17, claims a current T level of 0.4 mol/L. First women’s race, beat a former junior world number 2 by more than 30 seconds, a huge margin in downhill MTB which is not an Olympic sport but is on UCI calendar and attracts big sponsorship deals.
Evelyn Williamson: One of two men who raced for elite women's team Pratt Racing.
Chelsea Wolf: 29; out since 2014. BMX rider. At end of first UCI World Cup season 2019, was ranked 5th in the world; 3rd place finishes at both the US National and Pan-American Championships & 11th place at the 2019 UCI World Championship was her lowest finish of the season; went to Tokyo as an alternate on the U.S. Women's Olympic BMX freestyle team.
Philippa York: 65; transitioned after retirement from successful road racing career as Robert Miller, in 1995; came out as trans in 2017; cycling commentator and writer.
Maxine Yates: 20s; won women’s expert category (below elite) in downhill racing but was stripped of place for failing to meet British Cycling criteria.
.
