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news
HSBC UK National Cycling Centre (picture copyright British Cycling)Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges breaks silence to question “alleged ineligibility”
Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges says she ‘just wants to race competitively again’ after being told that she cannot compete in the women’s event at this weekend’s National Omnium Championships under current UCI guidelines.
In a statement released on Friday, Bridges said that she has been in contact with British Cycling and the UCI over the last six months and has provided the two governing bodies with “medical evidence that I meet the eligibility criteria for transgender female cyclists”.
The 21-year-old also criticised the coverage of her case in the British media, which she says has resulted in her being “relentlessly harassed and demonised” in recent weeks.
She said: “I am an athlete, and I just want to race competitively again, within the Regulations set by British Cycling and UCI after careful consideration of the research around transgender athletes.
“No one should have to choose between being who they are, and participating in the sport they love.”
Bridges was set to make her competitive debut as a female cyclist at the National Omnium Championships in Derby this weekend, taking on leading riders such as multiple Olympic champion Dame Laura Kenny.
After revealing her struggles with gender dysphoria in a Coming Out Day article written for Sky Sports in October 2020, Bridges started undergoing hormone therapy last year. Her testosterone levels are now sufficiently low to allow her to compete in women’s events under British Cycling’s Transgender and Non-Binary Participation Policy.
According to the latest version of the policy, transgender athletes are required to have testosterone levels below 5 nanomoles per litre for a year (men generally range between 10 and 30 nanomoles per litre) before being permitted to compete against other women.
However, British Cycling revealed on Wednesday that it had been informed by the UCI that “under their current guidelines Emily is not eligible to participate” at the championships in Derby.
The UCI told the national body that, because international ranking points are allocated at national championships, Bridges could only race once her eligibility to compete as a female in international competitions is confirmed, a process which is still ongoing.
In a statement released on Wednesday, British Cycling said: “We have been in close discussions with the UCI regarding Emily’s participation this weekend and have also engaged closely with Emily and her family regarding her transition and involvement in elite competitions.
“We acknowledge the decision of the UCI with regards to Emily’s participation, however we fully recognise her disappointment with today’s decision.”
Bridges responded to her exclusion on Friday evening, saying that she has been in contact with the UCI and British Cycling to request clarity concerning her ineligibility, and called on the two bodies to reconsider their decision.
Her statement reads:
For the last six months, I have been in contact with British Cycling and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) over the eligibility criteria I would need to meet as a transgender woman in order to race in the female category at the British National Omnium Championships this Saturday, 2 April 2022.
In that time, I have provided both British Cycling and UCI with medical evidence that I meet the eligibility criteria for transgender female cyclists, including that my testosterone level has been far below the limit prescribed by the Regulations for the last 12 months.
Despite the public announcement, I still have little clarity around their finding of my ineligibility under their regulations.
Bridges also criticised how her case has been handled online and in the British media, including alleged reports that some female competitors had threatened to boycott the event if Emily raced, which she says has led to her receiving “targeted abuse” on social media:
As is no surprise with most of the British media, I’ve been relentlessly harassed and demonised by those who have a specific agenda to push. They attack everything that isn’t the norm and print whatever is most likely to result in the highest engagement for their articles, and bring in advertising.
This is without care for the wellbeing of individuals or marginalised groups, and others are left to pick up the pieces due to their actions. Trans people are the latest of a long list of people to be treated this way, and unfortunately, without change, we won’t be the last.
I’ve had journalists at my front door every day harassing us for comment and story, my privacy has been totally violated over speculation around my eligibility and fairness to compete. I’ve had to deactivate my social media to prevent the targeted abuse I am receiving, and block websites to stop seeing them.
This is despite the fact I have not yet raced in the female category. I have been judged despite a total lack of evidence against me, purely because I am trans.
After obtaining a PhD, lecturing, and hosting a history podcast at Queen’s University Belfast, Ryan joined road.cc in December 2021 and since then has kept the site’s readers and listeners informed and enthralled (well at least occasionally) on news, the live blog, and the road.cc Podcast. After boarding a wrong bus at the world championships and ruining a good pair of jeans at the cyclocross, he now serves as road.cc’s senior news writer. Before his foray into cycling journalism, he wallowed in the equally pitiless world of academia, where he wrote a book about Victorian politics and droned on about cycling and bikes to classes of bored students (while taking every chance he could get to talk about cycling in print or on the radio). He can be found riding his bike very slowly around the narrow, scenic country lanes of Co. Down.
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74 comments
I have sympathy for Emily - it must be very difficult to your life against social norms and personal abuse is not justifiable. This issue is not that she is trans, it is that she benefited in an athletic sense from male development and puberty, an advantage not availble to female athletes. I feel she has been let down by those advising her and by the governing bodies who have set themselves up for failure by failing to take heed of both clear scientific evidence and the views of female athletes.
What is being asked is in my opinion deeply unfair for female athletes (of all levels, not just elite). The question of 'what is a female' is a little off target and conflates people with rare variations of sexual development with transgender people (and note, the chromosome conformations in that diagram that keeps being posted describe different routes to being male or female, not different sexes).
For sports purposes, male and female can be separated by classifying according to natural testosterone production and physiological ability to respond to it in a developmental sense. A testosterone driven puberty cannot be completely undone by subsequent testosterone supression. The scientific data is very clear on this - haemoglobin may change, but strength and muscle mass is less affected - and obviously skeletal structure is unchanged. Trans athlete advocate Joana Harper now talks about 'meaningful competition' rather than absoloute fairness as she knows what the data show - her own paper showed a retained advantage in trans women.
I really want to celebrate Emily's cycling achievements but they must be benchmarked appropriately, in competition against the right group of athletes for them to have meaning and for her to have the public support she deserves.
Seems like a very sensible, and sensitive, overview. I think the sticking point might be for those who hold to the ideal of transwoman is woman with no differentiation.
The easiest way to solve this problem is to have an open catagory where women, men, gay, transsexual or whoever might want to compete in a cycling race. If you're a good enough rider it shouldn't deter you from entering this proposed open catagory. Keep the traditional races to specific gender, man or woman by birth. Everyone is happy! Hopefully sponsors won't back out and keep the wheels turning.
Er - I don't think anyone's lobbying for gay people to have their own classification, or ride in ones they can't currently.
Wait - I thought we'd sorted out those gender vs. sex definitions even if we didn't agree on anything else? (ignoring the sexual orientation angle as mdavidford has that covered - it's "don't ask, don't tell" of course!) Please tell me we're not back at the start again? It's bad enough trying to explain the ins and outs of segregation by transport mode.
I prefer separated or protected infrastructure.
Segregation just seems wrong.
I stand (apart) corrected! I'm an "unbundled" type myself although that also needs recoining in English - "decoupling" is also not quite there.
Consciously uncoupled?
Thank you, but I didn't mean it as a correction, and it may be mere somantics, but to me the term segregation has so many (justifiably) negative connotations.
And I'd like to point out the segregation was never justified.
The article that I got that diagram from is titled "Visualizing Sex as a Spectrum" so I don't quite get what you mean. (article: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/visualizing-sex-as-a-spectrum/)
The UK government defines sex as:
I didn't intend to conflate unusual genetics/development with transgender, but was trying to illustrate how complex sex assignment can be and some of the reasons that a person may not be content with being considered one sex or the other.
Surely there's more to it then just testosterone levels. Zach went through male puberty, therefore his hips didn't widen, so the angle of his thigh bone didn't change which would have an effect on the power his skeleton could transfer.
Emily also didn't go through female puberty.
Can take all the hormones you want, but surely you cant reverse the affects of puberty and its "advantages/disadvantages "
If somebody was to transition before puberty and the introduction of hormones changes the way the Skeleton and muscle stucture changes im sure there would be less argument
For those who haven't seen this excellent interview, here's Pippa York's take on transgender athletes.
https://youtu.be/5abgXEWQPlI?t=1115
A good video - particularly about people's struggle to make their way through life, authorities not speaking with people actually affected by rules and the polarisation of responses / debate. Again in the interests of hearing other voices I'd note that there is a rejoinder to specific sporting / physiology points raised in that interview (with citatations of data / scientific literature) from the "Women's rights network". I know nothing about them (not into the twitters) - presumably a trigger warning needed as I recall some group like that was being labelled as "haters" in a previous thread?
In pretty much any walk of life, pastime or career, how a person wishes to identify with respect to gender should be without negative consequence or relevance. If I go to my Doctor's surgery for a prostate exam I really, genuinely have no issue if the GP is male, female or dressed as either. I take on trust that they are a professional, qualified as a GP.
But in certain elite sports that just doesn't work. Emily Bridges is asking the authorities to make an impossible decision that will likely have unfair consequences to either transgender athletes or (as defined by birth sex) female athletes. We all have to make choices in life, maybe she should accept that she has to decide if being female is more important or being a top level male athlete is more important.
One of the unintended consequences of accepting transgender athletes into female classification is that early in their careers, hopeful female athletes may feel compelled to identify as male, take male hormones, compete, train and build bodies with male characteristics before transitioning back at a later time.
Not sure why you are making this about Emily? BC and UCI made the rules she is just trying to follow them. I agree in part with you but they should have thought more about the rules.
we also have to accept that this is an experimental phase where those rules are still being worked out.
Why don't they carry out the experiment while racing with the men? Why does it have to directly affect the results and incomes of women?
I can't believe this is a serious comment! April 1st was yesterday, wasn't it? I genuinely hope that I've misread your meaning and you're not seriously suggesting that gender dysphoric athletes (or people in general) transition because they want to! Or that athetes (or people in general) would be cynical enough to undergo gender reassignment in order to get a competitive edge!
My mind is absolutely blown!
However it's refreshing to read through the comments below and see the genuine discussions and apparent lack of brainlessness and outright prejudice.
This from the people who act incredulous when you say a woman can't have a penis.
Is MattieKempy some sort of anarchist art collective or something?
Nope, he's a person. But he is sympathetic toward anarchism, so you're on the right track.
I don't think that is what Mungecrundle said. I thought it was that, as an unintended consequence of rules to enable transfemales to compete, female athletes might seek parity with transfemale athletes by likewise enduring a period of male development and accruing the lasting physical benefits, just as transfemales have done, before reverting to being female. In other words, the latitude given to admit transfemales could be exploited by anyone. One rule for all - otherwise you are back to the problem of deciding who was a biological female in the first place.
Moreover, whilst bona-fide gender dysphoric individuals may not be making it up, sport is of course not short of people and organisations who will do anything to gain the advantage, so the rules and test have to guard against that possibility. It's the age old problem of asking if someone is a liar or a cheat - you can't rely on the answer.
In fact, on further reflection, the rules can't discriminate between genuine gender dysphoria and others, not without having some test for the genuineness. So whatever rules apply for the benefit of genuine cases apply to all.
So in creating those rules the governing bodies are allowing for any male to undergo testosterone reduction and compete as females, without being required to pass some test of their motivations. Genuine dysphorics themselves have demanded no less, so you'd only be allowed to test the ones who fail the test.
Given the risks associated with any drug regime, the regulators have a duty to ensure they are not creating a situation where those who don't take the risks are at a disadvantage - that is the whole point of doping regulation. Which is the same as saying they must ensure that people admitted to competition via these channels are at no advantage because of it.
Unfortunately, recent history has many proven examples of state sponsored "special athlete training programs". Cycling hardly has a clean sheet when it comes to sailing close to the wind wrt medical exemptions let alone outright cheating.
Only a fool would discount that any route of exploiting rules and regulations designed to protect one set of athletes will be left unexploited.
I get it that it's a bit difficult in sports where power is the dominant factor... but for endurance cycling, this has been proven to be possible. There was a Dutch transgender pro, retired last year and she competed with the male hormones being suppressed, she did not turn into a winner in the female ranks but cold hold her own quite well. So, exclusions might need to depend based on the type of cycling, as in sprinting the male advantage doesn't really go away, but it does in endurance.
under this caveat, it could still be possible for a transgender to win an endurance event, but the win would not come from male physiology but the endurance component which doesn't seem gender specific.
I suppose in the longer term statistics will provide the answer. However that leaves a long period of uncertainty.
If you are talking about Natalie Van Gogh. who retired at the age of 47 last year, having come into pro cycling around 2008 at 34....her best season was 2019 when she was 45 years old with around 120 UCI points. If you go to somewhere like ProCyclingStats and look at womens rankings, try and find many female riders that can do those sorts of points at that age....There are maybe one or two.....so I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
The only two I can think of would be Amber Neben and Olga Zabelinskaya....who've both been popped for doping.
It has been demonstrated that women don't have the drop in testosterone males have after 40, like Van Vleuten not showing signs of slowing down. (Jeani Longo is Ofcourse a tainted example, but she went on well in her 50-ties) I'm not attributing physical age of women stopping competitive sports, often it's the biological clock, the monotomy of the same thing over and over again or physical wear and tear.
Age is also not an argument in this case, Van Gogh might have been able to continue longer because her male testosterone was taken away, not despite of it. An effect normal males wouldn't be able to escape.
Here's hoping road.cc have beefed up the comment threading engine.
"I am an athlete, and I just want to race competitively again"
Do you mean as you did on the 27th of February 2022 when you won the BUCS mens national points race??.... Was that not competitive?? I understand that she wants to compete in a female category, but biologically, she'll never be female.
One issue I really have is with British Cycling and its licensing. Currently, Emily is listed as male on her license, which for whatever reason has caused a problem for her, but also, when she was racing as a male called Zach, he had some great results that earned him ranking points and higher categories on his license as a result. These should all be expunged for Emily, as she is brand new to women's cycling, she needs to have a brand new license, starting at Cat 4 and working on gaining ranking points and moving up. This I've no doubt won't be a problem, but it would also give BC the knowledge and show how stupid their policies are. Giving time to sort it before even getting anywhere near Elite racing...
The other issue I have, is she's complaining about the media railing against her, while all the time courting a certain section of the media who are currently (allegedly) making a documentary about her life, transition and all that encompasses....If you put yourself out there in the media, you will get both good and bad written about you.
Can you define what you mean by biologically female please?
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