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news
2023 Tour of the Gila women's podium Austin Killips (image credit: Tour of the Gila)"Trump singled me out for ruining women's sport": Transgender cyclist accuses president of "fixating hate" on trans athletes instead of working to "elevate, fund or support women athletes"
Transgender cyclist Austin Killips has responded to Donald Trump and accused the president of using fear around the idea of trans athletes "invading women's sports" to "fixate hate and attention" on them, while "doing nothing at all to elevate, fund or support women athletes".
The comments come in an opinion piece published by the Guardian, Killips calling the article her "response" to Trump having "singled me out" as "someone ruining women's sport".
Killips' victory at the UCI 2.2 Tour of the Gila in 2023, as well as wins in cyclocross and ultra-endurance races, sparked much debate and scrutiny from politicians, the press and wider public. Her situation has been comparable to that of Emily Bridges in the UK, both trans cyclists subject to vast media attention and comments from politicians who have questioned their right to race in women's events.
In July 2023, two months on from Killips becoming the first trans cyclist to win a UCI women's stage race, the sport's governing body banned transgender female cyclists who have transitioned after puberty from competing in international women's races.
Killips has continued to compete in gravel events and other endurance races and was this month mentioned by Trump as the newly inaugurated president announced his Keeping Men Out of Women's Sports executive order. Trump said Killips is "a male cyclist posing as a woman" who "competed in the 800-mile Arizona Trail Race – a very big deal in cycling – and obliterated the women's course record by nearly five and a half hours".
Pointing out that she took the record from a male athlete, Alex Schultz, Killips went on to explain in the Guardian piece how Schultz himself had previously beaten female ultra-distance legend Lael Wilcox's record, the event's "co-ed leaderboard" what "spurred" her interest in the event in the first place.
"Not that it got me anywhere, financially," Killips wrote. "It failed to secure me anything meaningful like industry sponsorships – tangible support that would have made my pursuits in sport tenable. Instead, my wins only served to generate more artifacts for the right's culture wars, while I remained unable to garner even a sliver of the institutional recognition that friends and fellow competitors with similar palmares have found.
"Transgender people lost the inclusion battle in sport ages ago. International governing bodies for competitions in running, cycling, chess, swimming, darts and more have repeatedly caved to pressure and helped shift the Overton window to exclude trans people from public life more broadly. The world's least gracious winners insist on kicking sand in our eyes.
"Trump's executive order is a perfect scam: he and his acolytes get to talk endlessly about the fake spectre of trans athletes 'invading' women's sports, while never putting any of their attention, immense political cache and funding access towards things that would meaningfully elevate the state of women’s sports. Instead, they get to fixate their hate and attention on every transsexual woman who dares show up to a rec T-ball league with her friends. Meanwhile, the women who simply want to compete and labour as athletes are left in the cold."
Killips says conditions for female cyclists looking for a team or a race "are the worst they have been in the last decade".
She continued: "Consider this: when you watch a professional race, it's common for an announcer to regale spectators with the resumes of the women on the start line. Many of them are record-shattering athletes and also hold full-time jobs as doctors, researchers or investment bankers. These remarks always come in good faith, but as a means of contrasting us against the men – who usually have enough money and support thrown behind them to make a living as athletes – they speak to the sad state of affairs in women's sport.
"And soon, things for women's sports will get even worse. Because it bears repeating, as clearly as possible: their project contains no measures that help female athletes at the professional level as labourers, and certainly nothing that even gestures towards new investment opportunities for girls pursuing their dream. It's a free market that devalues women's labour at every turn.
"In fact, the only action items referencing funding simply establishes a precedent for rescinding money from organisations investing in women and girls who have given their lives and bodies to sport. In this new reality, all women lose. In fact, everyone loses – except for the people cashing checks and amassing political power.
"They found a scapegoat, and all they have done is enrich themselves with five-figure speaking fee tours, while taking the oxygen out of the room. The only lane they've made is one that encourages women to quit competing for a life of news appearances and college campus speaking tours. They are, for lack of a better word, cowards who don’t want to do the actual work of empowering and supporting athletes.
"So my argument is quite simple. Maybe you take umbrage with trans people in sports, and in turn me (whatever, you won that battle). But if you purport to care about women's sports, about girls getting a fair chance at competing, you need to ask yourself why, at the height of a historic moment of sweeping and unchecked austerity measures, the loudest and wealthiest people in the room have built a movement that culminated in this: an executive order that establishes a precedent to strip funding away from women in sport."
Prior to the UCI's ban on transgender female cyclists who have transitioned after puberty from competing in international women's races, Killips raced numerous high-profile events, including finishing ninth in the United States' national championships road race in 2023 and competing in several rounds of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup in Europe.
Following her win at the Tour of the Gila, the UCI said it would make an "eventual decision" on its transgender policy and "take into account all elements" of heated debate. That decision banning transgender female cyclists who have transitioned after puberty from women's races came in July.
A couple of months earlier, British Cycling updated its transgender policy and introduced a new "Open" category to run alongside the women's category and which transgender women would be required to compete in.
> British Cycling's transgender and non-binary participation policy: a cyclist's experience
Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges claimed the announcement amounted to trans women being "banned" and called British Cycling a "failed organisation" which "takes money from petrochemical companies and engages in culture wars".
Dan is the road.cc news editor and joined in 2020 having previously written about nearly every other sport under the sun for the Express, and the weird and wonderful world of non-league football for The Non-League Paper. Dan has been at road.cc for four years and mainly writes news and tech articles as well as the occasional feature. He has hopefully kept you entertained on the live blog too.
Never fast enough to take things on the bike too seriously, when he's not working you'll find him exploring the south of England by two wheels at a leisurely weekend pace, or enjoying his favourite Scottish roads when visiting family. Sometimes he'll even load up the bags and ride up the whole way, he's a bit strange like that.
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But only if the police recover it. Once it's been sold on? The chances of that are vanishingly small....
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With WBD having taken Discovery+ sports behind a significant paywall (Cycling, SPorts cars, Superbikes, MotoGP, British Superbikes etc etc)...
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TBH, this kind of stupidity is best ignored. By publicly responding we're giving them free publicity.
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Unfortunately politics is the problem. Our councillors pander to the anti-cyclist NIMBYs, especially when local elections are due. The government...
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Can't we just move them to Guernsey? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crrdnkyvpjgo
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Nice looking wheels but I can't afford that. I'm looking for some nice, wide wheels to optimally run 32mm tyres on.
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Wow! Pogacar does not shy away from top competition. This is fantastic. And I am going to be there.
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I recall there being a US survey at the time of the US election which concluded (and I simplify) that two-thirds of Americans support trans rights in broad terms, however two-thirds of Americans think trans women should not be in women's sport.
So while Trump is without a doubt a terrible person that appeals to the lowest common denominator, those loudly pushing the more absolute argument from either side are the minority viewpoints, and ones which ignores the majority who have a more nuanced perspective.
I'm no expert, but I know enough science and statistic, backed up with years of professional experience of challenging shaky evidence, to recognise that the vast majority of the loudest voices in the debate comes from people who have no other interest in sport (or science) who are searching out and sharing 'evidence' to support how they think things should be.
Cutting through that, it seems the more credible evidence still points fairly firmly towards transgender women (and those with certain DSDs) having an advantage over cis women in competitive sport. While I think it's possible and desirable to accommodate trans women in sport at a social level, for women's elite sport to mean anything, we should apply the precautionary principle and the default position should be to not allow trans women in women's elite and contact sports.
But also remember that the precautionary principle means that isn't the end to the gathering and review of evidence. Depending on your definition of sport, there is likely to be a better case for trans women in sports where strength is less relevant, and I'm very interested to see how trans men progress in men's sport.
In December last year Charlie Baker the head of the NCAA was giving evidence. It went like this
"
“How many athletes are there in the U.S. in NCAA schools?” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asked Baker during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday on federal regulations around sports gambling.
“Five hundred and ten thousand,” said Baker, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts who has served since 2023 as president of the NCAA, which governs intercollegiate athletics at more than 1,000 colleges and universities across the country.
“How many transgender athletes are you aware of?” Durbin asked.
“Less than 10,” Baker said. He did not say whether that number includes transgender men. "
And yet there was a need for a presidental decree!
And yet we have multiple of those ~10 athletes ending up on women's podiums. Which is statistically completely impossible, if TIMs have no advantage over women - which is overwhelming proof they in fact have a large advantage (as any woman who has tried to compete against even mid-teen or older *boys* will attest to). Which means a large chunk of the women - 510,000/x (2 <= x <= 8 ??? - I'm not sure what at ratio women compete versus men) - had their results affected by this. That's at least thousands of women, potentially more than 10,000 women, possibly closer to 100,000 women.
So... this "But it's just 10 out of 510,000" is just gaslighting. It's bullshit, and those spouting it must either know it, or else they are utterly ignorant of how competitive sports works and hence should refrain from commenting on it.
Your numbers seem at least as statistically flawed as those you're trying to criticise. They're tacitly implying that all those athletes are competing in one big pool, which is clearly nonsense. Without knowing what sports those ~10 individuals are competing in, what the depth of field is in them, how many podium places were up for grabs in each of those sports over whatever period you're considering, etc., you can't really say much of anything at all about the probability.
We lack exact breakdowns, indeed. We don't know how many of the 510k are women, how many of the 10 were TIMs competing in women's sports (though, likely, majority - males being more likely to enter into sports competition to begin with, and TIMs being much more likely to choose to enter women's categories than male for idealogical reasons), and how many sports they were in. That said, I've found figures on statista.com that suggest 47% of NCAA athletes are female - 229k in total - better than representation in sports seen elsewhere, but then... college is expensive in the USA and sport can be a way to get a scholarship.
That is why I said "at least thousands". E.g. NCAA swimming has 300+ women competing at the championships, and it seems reasonable to assume there were 2 to 3x that number at selections at the colleges. NCAA athletics are also quite popular, and the number is surely at least similar there. Then there's also NCAA cycling, which - according to collegesportsamerica.com - has ~400 cyclists competing (possibly lot less selective).
There are TIMs competing in at least those 3 NCAA sports.
So I don't think "at least thousands" is unreasonable at all, and I'd be surprised if I'm wrong on that as a lower bound on the number of women competing in NCAA sports affected by TIMs.
(You could well argue that sports like cycling, athletics and swimming have different disciplines within them, but then dominant athletes can enter multiple discplines - Thomas dominated in everything from short to endurance swimming once he changed from men to women's categoties).
I am 100% correct in the conclusion of my comment: "But it's just 10 out of 510,000" is just gaslighting. It's bullshit" - the number is _for sure_ much greater than the 10 trans people. Pointing at 10 as a figure - "oh look how insignificant, why would you even care unless you're a bigot?!" is definitely gaslighting.
I note you are trying to dispute my ball-park estimates, and muddy the waters, but you provide no better numbers.
Not for me to do, since I'm not making any argument that depends on numbers - merely pointing out yours are as misleading as those quoted originally.
FWIW - I personally think numbers are entirely irrelevant here anyway, since this isn't an argument about facts, logic, science, etc. - it's a disagreement over values and beliefs. There is no argument which can establish which view is 'right'.
I stand by "at least a thousand". It is almost certainly _at least_ that (and higher again if we expand out past NCAA). You have provided no argument to counter my estimate, just bluster.
My comment wasn't directed at the 'at least a thousand' bit (though I think there are other issues with that). I was responding to the part of your comment that the numbers quoted made the number of podium places won by trans athletes 'statistically completely impossible'.
As far as 'bluster' goes, I'd say my contributions have been significantly more succinct than yours, but, as with the main 'debate' here, that's inevitably a matter of opinion, to which there's no 'right' answer.
There are at least 2 athletes who have been on NCAA podiums - indeed both have been quite dominant. To have 2 out of the mere 10 trans people podium, in a pool of 229k is indeed statistically improbable.
Stop beating a dead horse, people. This story isn't really about trans competitors but about the elected felon and his autocratic regime, targeting minorities.
Distracting the masses with smokescreen (non)issues (immigration, race, gender, etc) is a very effective way for the rich and powerful to stay rich and powerful.
This piece also discusses how female sport is kept poor in general, whilst male sport flourishes in comparison.
Isn't the simple solution to let transgender women ride and let naturally born women dope to level the playing field, and also let transgender men dope to level the even more unfair situation in the male peloton where transgenders don't stand a hope in hell of competing?
Why is there never any discussion of how unfairly transgender men are treated in sport? Is there any sport in which they've been permitted to find success?
What I find ironic is that the Enhanced games are funded by Trump Jr.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Are you saying you are in favour of 'othering' people you don't like? Because that is one of Trump's tactics to spread irrational hatred of people.
Protecting biological woman's rights isn't irrational or hateful .
It's not about protecting rights, it's about othering groups of the population. His EO states that there are only 2 sexes which is scientifically incorrect.
If you are unable to see the extremism and hatred being stirred up by the current regime, I despair.
In the interests of scientific correctness, could you name one of the other sexes please?
XX
XY
XXX
XXY
X0
people born intersex
The prefered term now is Differences in Sexual Development (DSD) rather than intersex, but putting that to one side none of the examples you've listed result in a sex that isn't male or female..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Dd8Ow8bA-Q
So back to my question, could you name one of the other sexes rather than list some chromosome combinations.
How are you defining sex then ?
The way science does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex
BTW Don't think for a moment that I believe Trump and the rest of his hangers on are anything other than a complete cesspit of humanity, but on this point they are scientifically correct - they're are just two sexes. Any other conjecture is just the scientfic equivalent of flat earth beliefs.
But the fact that there are just two sexes, mostly shouldn't place limitations on how people want to view themselves, or express themselves to others.
But (despite using this in argument) I don't think that is really what most people are arguing about. It is (at least in part) an "argument from nature" but people are not really that interested in the nature part - more a particular human view of the same.
I think the "sciencey" bit is not that interesting to people - or rather I think it's trumped by our "intuitive biological thinking" - which seems to be "essentialist" (informed by culture of course - perhaps it's mostly OK in your culture to have 3 categories rather than 2, for most purposes?).
As others have pointed out sport - at least at higher levels - seems to be all about extremes, tiny minorities but also arbitrary rules anway (speaking as someone who sometimes rides a recumbent)...
Yup I agree (and I'm not arguing with the points people are raising in that greater argument), people tend to conflate sex with sexual traits, gender roles, , and gender expression and then it get's messy.. And conversations about gender or gender expression are complex, and require nuance which can be difficult online - and for that reason I tend to stay clear of them.
I just get triggered when people assert things that are just scientifcally incorrect
Yeah ... although if you're too triggered by the latter then much of the internet will not a safe space for you!
Pretty straightforward:
A woman is an adult human free of Y chromosomes.
A man is an adult human with Y chromosomes.
If in doubt, look at the human who gave birth to you, she is a woman. Not all women are identical, some may not be able to conceive for example, but as a guide your mother is a good analog.
It's not that simple: https://bsky.app/profile/christopher664023.bsky.social/post/3lahwh7u6rk2t
If I recall, HP posted an interesting diagram that covered some of the science on this.
I believe the scientific terms for sexes hinge on what gametes are produced by the sexually reproducing organism (assuming heterogamy - the case for humans, although I believe there are a (very) few documented cases of fertile human hermaphrodites. It gets more complicated in other areas of life). Anyway - humans here I think - so presumably male, female, sterile(?) if incapable of producing gametes and we can't pick some other definition?) and (very) rare hermaphrodite?
(Not that this likely helps - people have their own ideas about how they want to think of the world. In at least one sense it doesn't matter how well or even if those align with how science slices and dices biology...).
Sexes in this sense might be a bit boring when it comes to sport because AFAIK while they are generally correlated with e.g. performance that's not a perfect link (of course, then rules come into it). And also not perfectly correlated with what scientists term "what bits you've got".
The particular sport may make a difference: for some time one of the top rock climbers in the world was female. Of course that may also reflect upon the development of the sport (probably "popularity").
Their bodies still either produced AND responded to testosterone; OR their bodies did not. They end up either with the male or female phenotypes (modulo developmental disorders of 1 or 2 of the sex organs).
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