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At Penn, transgender swimmer Lia Thomas sets the pace and stirs debate


The University of Pennsylvania
Sheerr Pool
Yale
Dartmouth
NCAA
Fox News
Newsweek
the Daily Mail
ESPN
the Ivy League
Hogshead-Makar
Champion Women
Hogshead-Makar’s
doctors’
Times
Olympian Brooke
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the Mayo Clinic
Duke University
Marquette University
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the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group
girls’
Hogshead-Maker
the Sports Governance Center
the University of Colorado
WTA
U.S. Soccer
NFL
MLB


Lia Thomas
Martina Navratilova
Chris Evert
Erika Brown
Penn
wrote.“Everybody
Michael Joyner
LaGwyn Durden
Schuyler Bailar
I. Bailar
Izzi Henig
Roger Pielke Jr.
Blackistone
Enes Kanter Freedom
Jenkins
Mikaela Shiffrin
Jon Gruden


Olympian
American
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White Kentucky


Sheerr Pool
the mountain.• Brewer


PHILADELPHIA
Instagram
Henig
China
Svrluga
Las Vegas


the Tokyo Games
Los Angeles Olympics

Positivity     44.00%   
   Negativity   56.00%
The New York Times
SOURCE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/01/10/lia-thomas-penn-transgender-swimmer/
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Summary

After undergoing more than two years of hormone replacement therapy, the transgender woman now competes for the school’s women’s team, and her fast times have sparked a debate from the starting blocks to online message boards to cable news networks.Thomas has shattered school records and has posted the fastest times of any female college swimmer in two events this season. Parents of other Penn swimmers sent a letter to the NCAA and the school last month expressing concern about the rules that allow Thomas to compete against women and the precedent she is setting, which the parents called a “direct threat to female athletes in every sport.”“All you expect is a fair chance,” one parent said in a recent interview, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect her daughter’s privacy. Tennis icons Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert have publicly said Thomas has no business competing in women’s swimming, as has Olympian Erika Brown, who said last month it’s “time to start standing up for women’s sports.”“A few years of testosterone blockers and estrogen doesn’t change the fact that she will have more powerful muscles, a larger heart and greater lung capacity [than] a biological woman,” Brown, who won two relay medals at the Tokyo Games last summer, wrote in an Instagram story post.Last week, both Penn and the Ivy League issued statements supporting Thomas. He said Thomas’s times might be illustrating that taking suppressants doesn’t negate the hormonal impact of puberty.“The thing you have to ask yourself is, ‘To what extent are there potential legacy effects of testosterone?’ ” he said.The NCAA issued a 38-page handbook in 2011 to outline its stance on transgender athletes, saying that “any strength and endurance advantages a transgender woman arguably may have as a result of her prior testosterone levels dissipate after about one year of estrogen or testosterone-suppression therapy.”The NCAA did not respond to a request for comment last week, but in a video posted in April, LaGwyn Durden, the organization’s director of sports medicine, said this is a complex issue and noted the science is far from definitive.“The science/medical community really hasn’t reached a consensus on testosterone threshold,” she said. She finished sixth in the short sprint, nearly three seconds behind Yale’s Izzi Henig, and then found herself struggling to chase down Henig’s Bulldogs in the anchor leg of the relay.Henig is a transgender male on the Yale squad but has put off hormone therapy for now and continues to compete on the school’s women’s team.Though Thomas’s times Saturday were well off her season-best marks, they probably won’t quiet any dissent.Along with Navratilova, Hogshead-Makar is part of the Women’s Sports Policy Working Group, an advocacy organization that says it’s trying to affirm girls’ and women’s sports “while including transgender athletes.”While she says transgender women who’ve never experienced male puberty should be permitted to compete against women, Hogshead-Maker says it’s possible there are enough transgender athletes in some sports to merit a wholly new competitive category.Roger Pielke Jr., director of the Sports Governance Center at the University of Colorado, noted that sports organizations have always grappled with complicated classifications, from disabled athletes to competitors switching nationalities.

As said here by Rick Maese