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sports Monday 20 June 2022
World swimming bans transgender athletes from women’s events

By CIARÁN FAHEY would work. The open cat- tory, harmful, unscientific”
AP Sports Writer egory is something that will new policy is “not in line
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) start being discussed to- with (the IOC’s) framework
— World swimming’s gov- morrow.” on fairness, inclusion and
erning body has effec- The members voted 71.5% non-discrimination on the
tively banned transgender in favor at the organiza- basis of gender identity
women from competing in tion’s extraordinary general and sex variations,” Anne
women’s events, starting congress after hearing pre- Lieberman of Athlete Ally,
Monday. sentations from three spe- a nonprofit that advocates
FINA members widely ad- cialist groups — an athlete for LGBTQ athletes, said in a
opted a new “gender in- group, a science and med- statement.
clusion policy” on Sunday icine group and a legal “The eligibility criteria for
that only permits swim- and human rights group the women’s category as
mers who transitioned be- — that had been working it is laid out in the policy
fore age 12 to compete in together to form the policy (will) police the bodies of
women’s events. The orga- following recommenda- all women, and will not be University of Pennsylvania athlete Lia Thomas prepares for
nization also proposed an tions given by the Interna- enforceable without seri- the 500 meter freestyle at the NCAA Swimming and Diving
“open competition cat- tional Olympic Committee ously violating the privacy Championships, March 17, 2022, at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
egory.” “This is not saying last November. and human rights of any Associated Press
that people are encour- The IOC urged shifting the athlete looking to compete cal and scientific termi- competition categories.”
aged to transition by the focus from individual testos- in the women’s category,” nology related to sex and In March, Lia Thomas made
age of 12. It’s what the terone levels and calling for Lieberman said. sex-linked traits (but) some history in the United States
scientists are saying, that if evidence to prove when a FINA said it recognizes use of sensitive terminology as the first transgender
you transition after the start performance advantage “that some individuals and is needed to be precise woman to win an NCAA
of puberty, you have an existed. groups may be uncomfort- about the sex character- swimming championship,
advantage, which is un- FINA’s “deeply discrimina- able with the use of medi- istics that justify separate the 500-yard freestyle.q
fair,” James Pearce, who is
the spokesperson for FINA
president Husain Al-Musal-
lam, told The Associated
Press. “They’re not saying
everyone should transition
by age 11, that’s ridiculous.
You can’t transition by that
age in most countries and
hopefully you wouldn’t be
encouraged to. Basically,
what they’re saying is that
it is not feasible for people
who have transitioned to
compete without having
an advantage.”
The World Professional As-
sociation for Transgender
Health just lowered its rec-
ommended minimum age
for starting gender transi-
tion hormone treatment to
14 and some surgeries to
15 or 17.
FINA’s new 24-page pol-
icy also proposed a new
“open competition” cate-
gory. The organization said
it was setting up “a new
working group that will
spend the next six months
looking at the most effec-
tive ways to set up this new
category.”
Pearce told the AP that the
open competition would
most likely mean more
events, but those details
still need to be worked out.
“No one quite knows how
this is going to work. And
we need to include a lot
of different people, includ-
ing transgender athletes,
to work out how it would
work,” he said. “So there
are no details of how that