Austin Killips, a 27-year-old man, has been awarded first place in the women’s race at the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico. The cycling event is run by UCI, the international governing body of sports cycling. Killips began cycling in 2019, before starting hormone-replacement therapy.
Here’s what Inga Thompson, a three-time U.S. Olympian and five-time national road-race champion, told Telegraph Sport:
This really highlights the issues that are happening to women in cycling. We have more than 50 transgender women in the sport. And what’s going on in the background is that women are just quietly walking away. They think, “Why bother, if it’s not fair?”
Take Hannah Arensman, for instance — a female cycling champion who was displaced from the podium by Killips in the UCI Cyclocross National Championships last December. Arensman wrote in an amicus brief for the Supreme Court that she was retiring from cycling at age 24, despairing that a new generation of female athletes “no longer have a fair chance at being the new record-holders and champions in cycling because men want to compete in our division.”
This is what the UCI had to say for itself: “The UCI rules are based on the latest scientific knowledge and have been applied in a consistent manner. The UCI continues to follow the evolution of scientific findings and may change its rules in the future as scientific knowledge evolves.” They are referring to the changes it made to its hormone requirements last year.
But it was and remains cowardly nonsense. There is no level of hormone impairment that can make it fair for a man to compete against a woman. Male mediocrity is not equivalent to female excellence.