Martina claim cops a serve

TRANS sportswomen have hit back at Martina Navratilova, after the tennis champion said “it’s insane and it’s cheating” for transgender women to be allowed to compete in women’s sport.

“A man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organisation is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a small fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires,” 18-times grand slam winner Navratilova wrote in The Sunday Times.

Navratilova’s comments are “disturbing, upsetting, and deeply transphobic”, said Rachel McKinnon, who in 2018 became the first transgender woman to win a world track cycling title, reigniting a debate over whether trans women have unfair physical advantages in sport.

Under rules brought in by the International Olympic Committee in 2016, athletes transitioning from female to male can now participate without restrictions. Male-to-female competitors must keep their levels of testosterone, a hormone that increases muscle mass, strength and haemoglobin, which affects endurance, below a certain level for at least 12 months.

Wimbledon champion Navratilova, who has campaigned for gay rights and suffered abuse when she came out in the 1980s, argued trans women have unfair physical advantages.

Navratilova “trades on age-old stereotypes and stigma against trans women, treating us as men just pretending to be real women,” McKinnon said.