Olympic swimmer made Tory peer after trans sport ban campaign

Telegraph

6 days ago

Sharron Davies, the Olympic swimming medallist, is to be made a Conservative peer after leading a campaign to ban transgender people from women's sport.
Kemi Badenoch is expected to nominate the Olympian for a peerage in recognition of her work in the autumn.
Simon Heffer, the author and historian who is a columnist for The Telegraph, and Graham Edwards, the Tory party treasurer, are also expected to become Tory peers.
Ms Davies won two gold medals in the 1978 Commonwealth Games and silver in the 1980 Moscow Olympics. She has played a pivotal role in the gender debate in recent years, calling for female sports to be confined to biological women in the name of fairness.
Her campaigning started in 2019, four years after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) removed the requirements for athletes who identify as women to have sex reassignment surgery.
She went on to write a letter to the IOC, signed by more than 60 world-class athletes, urging it to ban biological men from taking part in female-only events.
Reflecting on the cost of her activism in an interview with The Telegraph in 2023, Ms Davies said: 'I lost the vast majority of my work the moment I put my head above the parapet.'
Ms Davies – whose nomination by Mrs Badenoch was first reported by The Times – has warned that 'the most mediocre of men' are capable of beating women in sporting events.
Earlier this month, she said British sporting bodies such as those who oversee tennis and weightlifting could end up in court if they did not take action to ban transgender women from competing.
She has lavished praise on Mrs Badenoch in the past, saying earlier this month that the Tory leader was among the first ministers in the previous government to 'push back against woke'.
Throughout her career, Mrs Badenoch has pledged to protect single-sex spaces for women and insisted children cannot be transgender even though they may question their identity.
Columnist has backed Badenoch
Mr Heffer, a historian and author who writes about cricket, politics and arts and culture for The Telegraph, is also expected to enter the Lords. He is also the editor of Henry 'Chips' Channon: The Diaries.
Mrs Badenoch's first nine months as leader of the opposition have seen Reform UK surge ahead of the Tories in the polls amid claims she is struggling to cut through.
But in an article for The Telegraph in April, Mr Heffer said Mrs Badenoch was 'still learning the job and making all the right noises', warning the Tories would lose all remaining voter goodwill if they ditched her as leader.
Mrs Badenoch's third nomination is Mr Edwards, who became the treasurer of the Conservatives in 2022. In a sign of his success winning back support from businesses since the election, the party raised almost six times more than Labour in private donations in the first quarter of this year.
Data reported to the Electoral Commission showed the Tories raised £2.8m from individuals and companies from January to March, while Labour raised £530,000.