Transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has lost her legal case against World Aquatics and any hopes of making next month’s Paris Olympics

The US swimmer Lia Thomas, who rose to global prominence after becoming the first transgender athlete to win a NCAA college title in March 2022, has lost a legal case against World Aquatics at the court of arbitration for sport – and with it any hopes of making next month’s Paris Olympics.

The 25-year-old also remains barred from swimming in the female category after failing to overturn rules introduced by swimming’s governing body in the summer of 2022, which prohibit anyone who has undergone “any part of male puberty” from the female category.

Thomas had argued that those rules should be declared “invalid and unlawful” as they were contrary to the Olympic charter and the World Aquatics constitution.

However, in a 24-page decision, the court concluded that Thomas was “simply not entitled to engage with eligibility to compete in WA competitions” as someone who was no longer a member of US swimming.

The news was welcomed by World Aquatics, who hailed it as “a major step forward in our efforts to protect women’s sport”.

  • @UltravioletEnglish
    14•5 months ago

    Trans women have been allowed in the Olympics for 20 years now. There have been zero trans medalists. If this advantage actually exists, why aren’t they winning?

    • @GlowstickEnglish
      13•5 months ago

      If i had to guess I’d say it’s simply numbers. Compared to the rest of the population, trans people are extremely rare, and so there likely just haven’t been enough trans people to have been there yet.

      • SeaJ
        8•5 months ago

        Of it was simply numbers, there would have been a trans gold medalist by now. Trans people make up 1-3% of the population. Over the span of 20 years and hundreds of competitions each year, surely a group that supposedly physically dominates the gender group they are in would at least have gotten one gold medal.

        • @iopq
          4•5 months ago

          You need to be a one in a million talent. I’m a male and despite not taking testosterone blockers I don’t have enough talent to be successful in any sport against women. Even with my testosterone, I just don’t have elite genetics

      • @UltravioletEnglish
        1•5 months ago

        3% of the population, about 300 events per Olympics, assume 5 in the past 20 years, so that’s a conservative estimate of 1500 medals. You’d expect 45 medals to just be proportional, and significantly more than 45 would prove an advantage. 0 shows an extremely severe disadvantage.

        Actually more like 60 medals would be the baseline expectation if you’re counting winter Olympics too.

        Even if you estimate as conservatively as possible, 1% of the population and ignore winter Olympics, you have an expected medal count of 15, 0 is a massive anomaly without some sort of significant disadvantage.

        Edit: triple all those numbers to include silver and bronze, realistic estimate of 180, extremely conservative estimate of 45.

        • @dogslayeggs
          12•5 months ago

          You are completely ignoring the externalities of competing at the Olympic level. Trans people are going through so many societal, cultural, interpersonal, and internal conflicts that focusing on training at an Olympic level is going to be more difficult. You can be the most physically gifted athlete in the world, but if your head is not in the right space to train 12 hours a day while still going about your normal life then you aren’t going to be able to compete at that level. Hell, look at how far Tiger Woods’s performances fell after his public disgrace. Yes, some of that was drugs and some was from an injury, but a lot of sports is mental.

          Also, you are ignoring that while the Olympic committee might allow it, do you think most countries in the world are so open about trans people?

          Also also, do you remember the controversy around the East German women’s team from the 70s? How everyone suspected some were men? There might have been trans people winning medals, just maybe not openly.