Davies calls for revolt over cycling trans rules
Olympic silver medallist left outraged by ‘ridiculous’ laws UCI refuses to impose blanket bans on Bridges and others
Sharron Davies yesterday told women cyclists they must stage a public revolt against their sport’s “ridiculous” new transgender rules – amid accusations they were brought in despite opposition from 93 per cent of female riders.
Davies said those who faced “losing out” to trans women may even need to boycott races after the UCI, the sport’s governing body, refused to impose a blanket ban on Emily Bridges and others who have gone through male puberty competing against them.
The UCI found itself under attack from both sides of British sport’s toxic trans row after Bridges’s mother also accused it of a “moving of goalposts” by announcing stricter rules from July 1 that could ruin her plan to switch from racing against men until the summer of 2024, denying her the chance to qualify for that year’s Olympics.
Davies, Britain’s 1980 Olympic swimming silver medallist who has become one of the faces of the campaign to protect the female category in sports, denounced the UCI decision to halve the maximum permitted plasma testosterone for trans women racing in that category from 5 nmol/l to 2.5 nmol/l and doubling the period they must remain below that threshold before being allowed to compete from one to two years. “It’s going to have to get to a point at some stage where the athletes themselves come together and just say, ‘We’re not having this; we’re not going to put up with this’,” Davies said.
“I and retired athletes and Fair Play For Women and all these bodies can only do so much and, at the end of the day, they are the ones that will lose out.” Davies spoke out as
Alessandra Cappellotto of Cyclistes Professionnels Associes, the women’s branch of the only cycling union recognised by the UCI, said that, of more than 1,000 riders to respond to a survey about trans women, 93 per cent wanted them stopped from racing in the female category.
Calling for more scientific research into the whole issue, she warned that current research indicated forcing trans women to lower their naturally occurring testosterone below 2.5nmol/l was “dangerous for their health”.
Meanwhile, Bridges’s mother, Sandy Sullivan, said the governing body’s latest “moving of goalposts had created a significant amount of distress and upset to Em, to us as a family and the wider trans community”. The UCI’S announcement came three days before its counterpart in swimming, Fina, planned to ratify its own new rules on transgenby
der athletes, something that stops Lia Thomas qualifying for Paris 2024. Davies said she was hopeful her own sport would “do the right thing” by banning the likes of Thomas, who in March became the first trans woman to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association title.
She added: “Females are just not small men without testosterone. This is ridiculous.
“If somebody’s gone through male puberty, then there are advantages and they will always have those advantages.”
The UCI responded to attacks on its rule change stating it had been “based on the state of scientific knowledge published to date in this area and is intended to promote the integration of transgender athletes into competitive sport, while maintaining fairness, equal opportunities and the safety of competitions”.
It added the regulations “may change in the future”.