Sixteen members of the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team penned a letter to their school and Ivy League officials requesting that they do not pursue legal action against the NCAA’s updated transgender athlete policy. According to The Washington Post, the updated policy could bar William “Lia” Thomas, a biological male, from competing on the UPenn women’s swim team at next month’s NCAA championships.
As I’ve covered, Thomas made headlines in recent months for breaking two national women’s records at a swim competition last fall. At a separate competition in Akron, Ohio, Thomas won the 1,650-yard freestyle while the runner-up finished 38 seconds behind. In a turn of events last month, Thomas was “crushed” in two races by a biological female transitioning to male at Yale University. Previously, Thomas competed on the UPenn men’s swim team for three seasons.
Following Thomas’ winning streak against biological female swimmers, the NCAA updated its transgender athlete guidelines last month to allow the governing body of each sport to decide it’s own policy.
This week, USA Swimming unveiled a new “inclusion” policy surrounding biological male athletes who want to compete on a women’s swim team at the elite level, which I reported. The new policy requires that the swimmer must show a concentration of testosterone in their blood that is less than 5 nanomoles per liter continuously for at least 36 months. The swimmer will also be evaluated by a panel of three medical experts to determine if their prior physical development as a male gives them a competitive advantage over biological females.
After USA Swimming announced the new policy, “several” unnamed members of the UPenn women’s swim team issued a statement to ESPN saying they “support” Thomas’ transition and “value her as a person, teammate, and friend.” However, on Thursday, a separate letter sent by 16 members of the team expressed concerns over the “unfair advantage” Thomas has over the biological females competing in swimming.
“‘We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman. Lia has every right to live her life authentically,’ the letter read. ‘However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone’s gender identity. Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female. If she were to be eligible to compete against us, she could now break Penn, Ivy, and NCAA Women’s Swimming records; feats she could never have done as a male athlete.’
Thomas’s teammates did not identify themselves in the letter. It was sent by Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a 1984 Olympic swimming gold medalist, lawyer and chief executive of Champion Women, a women’s sports advocacy organization. She said in a telephone interview that she sent the letter on the swimmers’ behalf so they could avoid retaliation; in the letter, the swimmers claim they were told ‘we would be removed from the team or that we would never get a job offer’ if they spoke out against Thomas’s inclusion in women’s competition.”
Last month, I covered how a female UPenn swimmer gave an interview to The Washington Examiner on the condition of anonymity where she said “Lia was not even close to being competitive as a man in the 50 and 100 (freestyle events)” but added “just because Lia is biologically a man, [Lia] is just naturally better than many females in the 50 and the 100 or anything that [Lia] wasn’t good at as a man.”
In a separate interview with the Examiner on the condition of anonymity, a female UPenn swimmer said Thomas “compares herself to Jackie Robinson” and “mocks” competing on the women’s team.
“The NCAA swimming championships are scheduled for March 16-19, and Thomas has qualified for multiple events” The Post noted in their report. “[Thomas] seemingly will be allowed by the NCAA to compete because it is phasing in its new transgender policy in three stages, the first of which covers this year’s championships in winter and spring sports.”