Swimming with poise; bowing out with grace

If the people who run the Ivy League and the NCAA don’t have the courage to do the right thing, perhaps Lia Thomas does. Ms. Thomas is a senior on the University of Pennsylvania women’s swim team who previously competed for three years on the men’s team. While she had won three events in Ivy League championships as a man, she now has two best times nationwide as a woman.

Her dominance has upended the world of women’s athletics and initiated policy reviews at USA Swimming and the NCAA, with results expected in the next few weeks.

But Ms. Thomas should not wait for these reviews to do the right thing. She should bow out voluntarily because she is a biological male who, despite hormone therapy, continues to display advantages so great that they defythe very essence of sport.

That phrase — “she is a biological male” — may seem odd, but we can respect an individual’s identity while insistingon scientific fact and athletic fairness.

This won’t please everyone, especially the ideologues who usually dominate public discourse via social media. The difficulty of navigating this new issue is evident in swimming legend Michael Phelps’s excellent but somewhat stammering interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

“We all should feel comfortable with who we are in our own skin,” Mr.Phelps said.

“But I think sports should all be played on an even playing field. I don’t know what that looks like in the future, but it’s hard. Honestly … [lots of stammering here] .. it’s very complicated.”

He insisted again on the “even playing field” and finished, “That’s all Ican say.”

How is a pool that pits biological females against a recently transitioned adult woman “an even playing field”? Theseare some murky waters.

In a fascinating essay last month for Britain’s Daily Mail, Olympic gold medalist and civil rights attorney Nancy Hogshead-Makar recounted her experiences vying against dopedupEast German swimmers in the late 1970s, providing insights into what today’s young women stand to lose fromunfair competition.

She also succinctly analyzed race data, comparing Mr. Phelps’s and Ms. Thomas’s results to their peers, both male and female. The facts led her to conclude, “There is nothing fair about transgender woman Lia Thomas competing for the University of Pennsylvaniain NCAA swimming.”

Tennis great Martina Navratilova tweeted “Well done, Nancy!” to the article, finding it “well-reasoned and fair.”

An NCAA spokesperson called this matter “a continually evolving space,” but here’s what has not evolved: biological sex.

It is sex, not gender identity, that is at issue. Ms. Thomas entered adulthood as a man, gaining all the physical advantages bestowed by puberty’s coursing testosterone.

During her junior year of college she began hormone therapy to transition. She dropped out of school during thepandemic to preserve eligibility to compete for a final year as an undergrad, but as Ms. Hogshead-Makar’s analysis demonstrates, Ms. Thomas stillhas a dominant physical edge.

An article in last Monday’s New York Times described Ms. Thomas’s 100-yard freestyle race last weekend against Harvard University’s Samantha Shelton. Ms. Shelton was “on her way to a season-best time” until, in the final lap, Ms. Thomas “surged past for a near body-length victory.”

It isn’t just Ivy League women losing to Ms. Thomas; she “owns best marks in the nation in the 200 and 500 freestyle,” the Times noted.

In his finale, the Times reporter, Billy Witz, left the factual arena for a musing opinion: “[I]f there was something enduring about Saturday, it was … the way [Ms. Thomas] carried herself in the water — head down, with grace and ease.”

“Ease,” certainly, but “grace”? No — not in the sense that matters most.

While Ms. Thomas may demonstrate poise, the people obliged to display grace are the young women who have worked so hard to excel as athletes and are now disadvantaged for one person’s unfair gain. How is that right?

If Ms. Thomas were to bow out, to put the best interests — indeed, the rights — of others ahead of her desires? Now that would be grace.