Parkrun scraps all records to appease trans runners

Organisation takes drastic action after rejecting calls to stop allowing entrants to self-identify their gender

‘Numerous men losing their s--- over parkrun deleting/hiding data is quite a revelation’

PARKRUN has removed all gender records from its websites amid complaints that trans runners were taking women’s honours.

Groups including Women in Sport and the Policy Exchange think tank had urged organisers of the fun run to stop allowing entrants to self-identify their gender. They were backed by the former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies, who has accused Parkrun of “sex discrimination”.

Policy Exchange found in a report that at least three female records were held by transgender women, and campaigners said that by having publicised records for age, gender, number of wins and courses, Parkrun should follow governing bodies such as UK Athletics by protecting a category for women and girls.

However, Parkrun argued that it was a community event and public health charity that was primarily about inclusion rather than competitive performance, with records only designed to add interest and widen participation.

Campaigners said that women and girls were at risk of being alienated by allowing transgender women in the same female category record lists. The Policy Exchange report, which was also backed by the former tennis player Martina Navratilova and the Olympic gold medallist Daley Thompson, recommended that Sports England should require Parkrun to collect data based on biological sex.

They also wanted all records to be updated to reflect such a change. “If this does not happen within 12 months, taxpayers’ funding should be withdrawn,” said the report.

Hundreds of Parkrun 5km races take place across the UK each week, involving thousands of runners.

Campaigners wearing “Save Women’s Sports” slogans have been protesting against the gender records policy at events on a weekly basis. There was concern, however, that adopting a ‘sex at birth’ policy was not appropriate for an event like Parkrun, where all sexes run together, and would discourage transgender people – whose transition might have been entirely private – from gaining the event’s vast health benefits.

Now, Parkrun has decided to remove data from its websites, including course records, age-category records, world Parkrun records as well as statistics for most wins or for getting under a particular time.

It will still publish the results every week with simply a position, name, gender, age category and time. Participants can also still search for their run history and age grading, which is a relative measure of the time according to age and gender.

It is understood that Parkrun organisers accept that they could have been seen to be presenting the event as a race rather than a community run or walk.

They are also adamant that they had been long considering whether so many “performance” metrics were appropriate and were considering changes regardless of the campaign around gender self identification.

The move has angered runners who find the data and competitive element to be a major incentive for participation.

“Numerous men losing their s--- over Parkrun deleting/hiding data is quite a revelation,” said Mara Yamauchi, the former Olympic marathon runner. “I knew men care deeply about their own sports but this is really something. Shame so many of them have had nothing to say all these years.”

The Women’s Rights Network said that Parkrun “would rather stop publishing age category data and rankings rather than allow fair sport for women and girls”, adding: “There’s only been uproar now because they’d rather wipe records than be fair to women.”

Parkrun said that the changes had followed a review over many months by a global working group to consider “how we can present data in a way that is not off-putting and doesn’t imply that Parkrun is a race”.

This review had concluded that there was a disconnect between the performance data displayed so prominently on the site and the organisation’s “health and happiness” mission, it said.

Davies said it would have been “very easy to add course records for trans men and trans women”.

She added: “Parkrun have been guilty of sex discrimination for far too long and benefited from millions of pounds in public funding from UK Sport. Keep sport fair for both sexes!”

As well as asking for age and gender, Parkrun allows people to choose “prefer not to say” or ‘another gender identity’ but this would mean that the age category, gender, gender position and age grade fields would be blank in the results.