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news
Nicole Cooke-Focus_9210Nicole Cooke calls for separate category for transgender cyclists
2008 Olympic gold medallist Nicole Cooke has called on sport’s governing bodies to create a separate category for transgender athletes.
Cooke’s comments come after Emily Bridges was barred from competing in the female category at this weekend’s National Omnium Championships in Derby. Bridges was set to make her racing debut as a female cyclist at the championships after revealing her struggles with gender dysphoria in 2020 and beginning 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.
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.
> Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges breaks silence to question “alleged ineligibility”
Despite being a national event, the championships are UCI-controlled – with the results counting towards international rankings points – so Bridges could only race once her eligibility to compete as a female in international competitions is confirmed; a process which is, thanks to the UCI’s complicated procedures, still ongoing.
While Bridges and British Cycling were under the impression that she was to give six weeks’ notice before competing in her chosen event – as long as the required 12 months of reduced testosterone treatments were completed – the UCI actually needs at least six weeks to consider the evidence before granting permission to race, owing to the delay in Bridges’ case.
Writing in the Times this weekend Pippa York, who won the mountains classification at the Tour de France in 1984 as Robert Millar, said: “Her eligibility hasn’t been stamped on by the UCI under the guise of fairness or the laxity of British Cycling — in fact it’s due to the UCI’s complicated process and an unnecessary delay of six weeks to process an email containing the information the governing body requires.
“And even more poignantly, she’s been giving the UCI what it ought to have been looking for in the first place [including numerous blood tests and power data]. Not just a doctor’s note.”
York criticised the “toxic environment” which surrounds Bridges’ case and the position of transgender athletes in sport, which according to her includes “endless talk about trans women invading sport, taking girls’ places, erasing them, denying them a future… Framed as concerns, fairness, safety.”
The former pro, who publicly announced her own transition in 2017, wrote: “Emily isn’t a threat to women’s sport and she isn’t cheating anyone out of their place.
“She’s making her way into womanhood through a different path, which is incredibly difficult even when you negotiate it in private, so to do so in the glare of all the attention she is under is remarkable.
“What’s really galling in talking about this issue is that while everyone is crowing about fairness, safety and all the other stuff, there is a young woman — Emily is 21 — negotiating a medical process that will bring her peace in who she is. She has so many things to learn in so little time.”
While York criticised those who oppose Bridges’ involvement in women’s sport framing the case as an issue around fairness, Cooke claimed this weekend that a separate category should be created for trans women in order to ensure “fair competition”.
Writing in the Daily Mail, the former world champion claimed that “We need a way forward before the count of fractured young women, whose sporting dreams have been smashed by losing in an unfair competition they cannot win, rises to an unacceptable level.”
Referring to York, one of her childhood heroes, Cooke wrote: “Sport centres on fair competition among equals. Ask a welterweight which he would be more proud of – ten wins against a flyweight or one against another welterweight.
“If my cycling hero Pippa had transitioned when she was still competing and I had met her when I was the world's number one female road cyclist, I doubt there would have been a competition.”
She argued that “there must be fairness to both trans and biological females. They must each have their own category so each group can enjoy fair competition on an equal basis. The field in the trans group will be smaller. If the motive to compete is genuine, competing fairly without a circus of discord is surely preferable. It would allow trans athletes to enjoy sport without distraction.
“However, if a trans athlete's true motive is the desire for fame and wealth – to access a subsequent career in I'm a Celebrity, or similar – then a dark path will lie ahead.”
Cooke acknowledged that a separate transgender category would fail to offer the same financial opportunities as other categories, but argued that this is also currently the case when it comes to women’s sport.
Criticising the indecisiveness of sports administrators, Cooke concluded: “A separate category is required. The biological change required for competitive fairness in sport, between both trans athletes and women, cannot be achieved.”
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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39 comments
the daily mail doesn't publish anything of use to the human race. It's a complete waste of trees.
Aaaand he's back!
As long as you can discredit the side of the argument you don't want to hear then it was never said.
When one side of a debate is censored or totally ignored, it's no longer a debate.
Let's hope Nicole's courage to stand up for her fellow female athletes encourages others to do so. This is exactly what's needed. But, as long as the vocal few het-hating non-transphobes on twitter keep getting anyone who speaks out cancelled, I suspect anyone with a non-conforming view will have their platforms removed from them.
not "het hating", you odd transphobe. You do like to make wild accusations withiut any proof - that's twice this thread, and once in the previous thread where yiu claimed the athlete threw their match. You did so without a shred of proof, and when challenged went quiet. Why was that, I wonder?
If you want to be heard and have your opinion considered, doing it in a paper with an editorial policy of "something new to hate every day" and that has historically been antiLGBT at every turn, isn't exactly going to help.
so the other female athletes who stood up for their other female athletes, they don't count? They're not courageous? or is it only courage if it's discriminatory?
Aaaaand that's how you discredit Nicole's views. Done. She didn't say anything of value or worth reading. Well done.
You admitted that there's a perfomance difference between trans women and non-trans women and therefore have shown it's not fair they be included in the same categories.
Why not have an open category? One were competitors can be highlighted as TM, TF, NB. This would give the important visual advertisement the trans community need until there are more trans athletes and the open category can be diversified.
There's no point ruining female sports, that won't do anyone any good. Unless that's the goal all along.
nope, that's not how language works. That isn't what I said, and despite your best attempts at proving otherwise, I'm assuming you're educated enough to know I didn't say that as such that's just your usual deliberate twisting when someone doesn't say what you want them to say, you pretend they did anyway
that's odd, I didn't say that I have in fact been really careful not to throw around generalisations, and in fact even asked you to define "Fair" in the context of genetic outliers competing against each other
Does it take effort to make this much up, or do you do it by instinct now?
So are you going to back up your claim that the trans athlete didn't do that well deliberately? You went real quiet when you were asked to substantiate it, and ignore it now.
who says this is "ruining" womens sports? Where is your evidence that this is actually happening, as opposed to the usual phobic fear that is spouted instead?
the visibility is then "yeah, you're equal except when we decide you're not".
Do you have any ability to understand how damaging that is, or is that not allowed to enter your black ans white view of the world, where trans people don't have the right to exist?
Sounds like the Daily Mail to me!
Yup, that's it.
That's the job of the news media in general so I hope you don't think whatever news outlet you rely on is any different. It keeps 99% of us spending all our time arguing with each other while a few rich powerful individuals and corporations can run the world in such a way that benefits only them.
"If You Don’t Read the Newspaper You Are Uninformed, If You Do Read the Newspaper You Are Misinformed"
1) prove, with quotes, that anyone has stated there are NO performance advantages. If you can recall back to the long thread, you were asked to define fair in a field which is full of genetic outliers by definition...
2) yeah, yeah I did post that. The person who claimed no transmen ever compete against cismen then refused to comment.
found your proof that the trans athlete threw their race deliberately? You claimed it then went really quiet...
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