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Trans Athletes Find a Refuge: Equestrian Sport
Though he is a professional coach in both archery and equestrian, when it comes to competitions, Carey Norland, a 26-year-old athlete from Eugene, Ore., will participate in only one of the sports: horseback riding.
That is because as an archer, Norland, who is nonbinary and uses both they/them and male pronouns, may only compete in the same category he was assigned to at birth: female. On horseback, the rules allow him to compete against a mixed group of riders of all genders. In fact, equestrian is the only recognized Olympic sport where male and female competitors compete against each other.
As such, many riding disciplines, like show jumping, dressage and eventing, where riders also jump solid obstacles, have emerged as refuges in a sporting world grappling with questions of whether and how transgender athletes should compete. The debate has led to a slew of new legislation, an executive order and policy debates among other sports governing bodies.
'With riding I participate freely, and I have no problems at all. I know that no one is going to question me about my gender — it's not even addressed in the rule books,' Norland said in an interview this month from his stables in Eugene, where he trains his seven horses. 'It's about the relationship between the rider and the horse; hormones have nothing to do with it.'
Weeks after taking office, President Trump signed an executive order barring transgender women and girls from female sports. Similar bans for trans youth exist in more than half the states, and major U.S. sporting organizations like the N.C.A.A. have followed suit.
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