’We had such a sound body
OF the misconceptions surrounding FINA’s gamechanging policy for transgender athletes, the most misunderstood is why swimming’s leaders took the plunge when other sports had not.
The popular story is that FINA panicked because of the storm that erupted when University of Pennsylvania trans swimmer Lia Thomas won a national title at the US college
championships.
Because that happened just three months ago, and FINA’s bombshell new policy was made public only when delegates were asked to vote on it at the congress in Budapest last weekend, the simple but wrong assumption was that it was a hit job aimed squarely at Thomas.
The critics accused FINA of rushing through with a half-baked policy just to block Thomas from competing at the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
But the FINA executive who engineered and helped draft and oversee the entire policy says that notion is simply untrue.
“It’s easy to say Lia Thomas was the lightning rod but that’s not the case,” FINA’s chief executive director Brent Nowicki told News Corp.
“These issues, health and safety, welfare issues, competition, fairness issues, these are issues that have been in international sport for years now.”
In an exclusive interview outlining the background to the policy that has rocked the sporting world, Nowicki has lifted the lid on how the policy that has divided the world came to fruition.
Critically, he reveals planning started much earlier than people think – in 2021, not 2022 – and there was never any intention to exclude anyone. Rather, the starting point for the project was to find a way to include everyone in a fair way.
It was only after FINA received a detailed report it commissioned from independent scientists and medical experts that it felt compelled to come up with a policy that effectively banned transgender women from competing in elite female competitions.
“We didn’t start with the goalposts in front of us. We weren’t trying to kick that ball through those goalposts,” Nowicki said.
“We were trying to move the ball down the field methodically, correctly, and
that was the approach we had always taken.”
The starting point for the policy actually stems from FINA’s dark past, and attempts to clean it all up.
For much of its 114 years, FINA has been run primarily by men who spent millions of the sport’s fortune on their own lavish lifestyles instead of competitors struggling to make ends meet.
But that all changed last year after FINA elected a new president, Husain AlMusallam, on a platform to reform the organisation.
Nowicki, a US lawyer who had worked for years at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and has a reputation for meticulous planning, got straight to work on the first day he sat down at his new desk – June 8, 2021.
Overseeing the reforms – which promised to put the interests of athletes first – he soon discovered a range of issues not properly covered by the existing policies, including inclusion and fairness.
“There was no preconceived notion,” he said. “If anything, there was a desire to learn as much as we possibly could and figure out what does science say, what does it mean?
“I wanted to know what it was. What does being transgender mean? What does it mean scientifically?
What does it mean, chromosomally? What does it mean socially? What does it mean mentally?
“It’s not just being transgender that makes you transgender. There’s more to it than just the label you put on somebody. It was our duty to figure that out, educate ourselves.”
By November, the first group had been chosen. Comprising medical and science experts, it included Sandra Hunter, an Australian-born professor at the Department of Athletic and Human Performance at Marquette University.
In early 2022, the science group had handed its report to
Nowicki. The full report has not been published but the architects addressed the congress, explaining how competitions between male and female athletes were unfair once puberty kicked in because of the differences in testosterone values.
What’s more, the scientists showed how biological and physical changes could not be undone, which was one of the decisive factors that convinced FINA to prevent transgender women from competing in elite events if they had gone through puberty – essential rejecting the idea that level playing fields could be created by testosterone reduction
Once it became clear what the science was saying, Nowicki set up a second working group, of legal and human rights experts, to look at how to frame the policy.
The five members included former Federal Court of Australia judge Annabelle Bennett and James Drake, an Australian barrister and CAS arbitrator based in London.
Nowicki also began talking to athletes, sending out questionnaires to 300 around the world. The response was overwhelming.
About 83 per cent said eligibility for events should be decided by birth sex. And more than 63 per cent said they wanted to see an additional “open” category created to ensure everyone could compete.
Other sporting bodies are scrambling to catch up, facing increasing pressure to follow FINA, though Nowicki said that was never the intention.
“The media has said it was a very aggressive policy,” Nowicki said. “But we went as far as we needed to go to meet the legitimate objectives we felt were necessary for competitive balance, for fairness in our sport.
“We had such a sound body of evidence, we had a sound body of voice, we felt comfortable in our legal skin and we were prepared to go forward.”