Transgender athlete Lia Thomas pushed again at her critics throughout her first sit down interview following her historic NCAA swimming championship win this spring, reiterating that “trans ladies should not a risk to ladies’s sports activities.”
“I intend to maintain swimming,” she mentioned in an interview with ABC Information’ Good Morning America after making historical past in March as the primary overtly transgender athlete to win a NCAA Division I nationwide championship in any sport.
Thomas graduated from the College of Pennsylvania this month after competing for 3 years on the lads’s swim staff after which on the ladies’s staff this previous season after transitioning. In that last season, after finishing a yr of hormone alternative remedy as required by the NCAA to vary gender classes, she received the ladies’s 500-yard freestyle occasion with a season-best time of 4 minutes, 33.24 seconds. She mentioned she now plans to attend legislation faculty with a purpose of competing within the 2024 U.S. Olympic Group Trials.
“It’s been a purpose of mine to swim at Olympic trials for a really very long time, and I’d like to see that by way of,” she mentioned.
However her NCAA win was met with controversy with critics saying that she had an unfair, bodily benefit in opposition to her feminine cisgender rivals. Some members on her own swim team mentioned they assist her as a trans girl however mentioned she posed a risk to ladies’s sports activities and shouldn’t compete in opposition to cisgender ladies like them.
Thomas dismissed her teammates’ claimed assist.
“You may’t go midway and be, like, ‘I assist trans ladies and trans individuals, however solely to a sure level,’” Thomas mentioned. “The place if you happen to assist trans ladies as ladies, they’ve met all of the NCAA necessities, then I don’t know if you happen to can actually say one thing like that.”
She additionally questioned whether or not some cisgender ladies who’ve naturally larger testosterone ranges and bigger bone construction and physique needs to be allowed to compete in opposition to different cisgender ladies if individuals like her are disqualified.
“I’m not a medical knowledgeable, however there’s loads of variation amongst cis feminine athletes,” she mentioned.
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The long run for transgender athletes competing in ways in which Thomas has stays in query, nevertheless, with the NCAA in January updating its transgender athlete eligibility pointers to say that every sport’s nationwide governing physique could make their very own guidelines. These pointers are slated to enter impact subsequent season.
At least 18 states have in the meantime enacted legal guidelines or statewide guidelines that prohibit or restrict transgender athletes from taking part in women’ sports activities at public faculties. Some states have additionally handed, or tried to move, laws that targets transgender lavatory entry and gender-affirming care for youngsters.
Thomas was personally cited as motivators for a few of these athletic rule modifications. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who final yr issued one such ban in his state, personally issued a proclamation in opposition to Thomas’ NCAA victory in March whereas naming Thomas’ second-place competitor the “rightful winner.”
“The NCAA’s actions serve to erode alternatives for girls athletes and perpetuate a fraud in opposition to ladies athletes in addition to the general public at giant,” he mentioned in a press release.
Thomas continues to dismiss her critics’ findings and imposed limitations.
“Trans ladies competing in ladies’s sports activities doesn’t threaten ladies’s sports activities as a complete,” she mentioned. “Trans ladies are a really small minority of all athletes. The NCAA guidelines relating to trans ladies competing in ladies’s sports activities have been round for 10-plus years. And we haven’t seen any huge wave of trans ladies dominating.”
