Latest news with #LiaThomas
Fox News
2 days ago
- General
- Fox News
Activist athletes urge California girls' track title contenders to stand up to trans inclusion at state meet
California high school girls' track and field athletes will compete in the meet of their lives this weekend under the national spotlight at the state championship in Clovis. The meet will double as a battleground for the ongoing culture war over trans athletes in girls' sports, with a trans athlete set to compete in multiple girls' events. Protests and demonstrations are expected by spectators. Whether the athletes protest is yet to be seen. Several prominent former women's athletes who have been impacted by trans inclusion in their careers have expressed support for the girls competing to "stand up" against the California Interscholastic Federation during the event: Scanlan, a former UPenn swimmer, was forced to share a team and locker room with Lia Thomas during the 2021-22 women's swimming season. Scanland became the first UPenn women's swimmer to speak out against the school for allowing Thomas to compete with females, after the controversial season ended. Scanlan skewered California Governor Gavin Newsom for letting the situation in the state get to this point, and encouraged the girls involved to "stand up" on Saturday. "It's make or break for California. This is no longer a bipartisan issue, and even democrats see that. Gavin Newsom couldn't be more out of touch with women. I am beyond grateful that the Trump administration is taking this issue so seriously and I encourage all female athletes to stand up against this. I support them and I know the majority of Americans do too," Scanlan told Fox News Digital. Turner made global headlines at the start of April when she refused to compete and knelt in protest of a trans opponent at a fencing match in Maryland. Turner says she would support the girls competing in Clovis to stand up for themselves as well this weekend. "I fully support these young women standing up against males in the women's track and field events. CIF has stolen the precious high school competitive years from these young ladies and compromised their athletic and scholastic trajectories by allowing males in their category," Turner told Fox News Digital. Turner praised one young woman who has already spoken out, La Canada High School track and field star Katie McGuinness, who urged the CIF to "take action" in amending its policy after finishing second to the trans athlete at a sectional final on May 17. "Katie McGuinness is right, this is a time-sensitive issue and CIF would do well to abandon all transgender policies immediately and comply with both the President's Executive Order and Title IX," Turner said. "These women are extraordinarily brave to be speaking out at their age. This is not easy, but women and girls across the United States thank them for their stand!" McNabb suffered permanent brain injuries after she was spiked in the head by a trans opponent during a high school match in 2022. She has since become a leading ambassador for standing up against trans athletes in girls' and women's sports, and testified before congress alongside Turner at a recent DOGE hearing earlier this month. McNabb reminded girls competing in Clovis this weekend that they have the right to stand up or even "walk away" from the competition. "To the girls competing in California — I know exactly how it feels to lose to a male athlete. It's not fair, and it's not right. You've trained for years, and now you're being pushed aside because officials would rather protect feelings than protect girls. You don't owe silence to anyone," McNabb told Fox News Digital. "If you want to speak up or walk out — do it. You're not alone, and you're not crazy for wanting fairness. Women have fought for decades to have equal opportunities in sports. Letting males take over isn't progress — it's going backwards. To California officials — you're failing these girls. You're letting biological males dominate their sports and take their spots. This isn't equality — it's erasure. And we're done pretending it's okay." Soule, a former high school track and field athlete herself in Connecticut, was one of the first young women to stand up against systems that allow biological males to compete against women in 2018. That year, as a four-time National Qualifier, she was forced out of a regional championship due to two trans athletes taking women's spots and who lost out on the chance to earn attention from college scouts and potential scholarships because of those snubs. Then she began to speak out in interviews with local news outlets. "I understand exactly how all the girls competing in this upcoming championship meet feel as I was in the same situation for 4 years during high school," Soule told Fox News Digital. Soule wouldn't encourage the California athletes to refuse to compete this weekend, but she would support some sort of demonstration by them. "It's easy for people to say that girls should take a stand and refuse to compete against a male athlete but it's not easy to sit it out when you've dedicated long hours training and sacrificed things like parties or sleepovers with friends to qualify for this meet. It's a devastating and demoralizing choice these girls are facing and my heart breaks for them," she said. "If I could say something to each girl in this competition it would be to compete and give it your best. You may have the chance to beat your personal best or break a school record. If you're robbed of the chance to get a higher place or just miss the podium, you could refuse to stand on the podium next to a male with unfair advantage during the awards ceremony and take your rightful place afterwards. I and the vast majority of this country have your back." Soule later sued the state of Connecticut over its gender eligibility policies, and the suit is ongoing. Some California girls' athletes have already taken steps to stand up against the CIF this track and field postseason. Crean Lutheran High Schooler Reese Hogan stepped up into the first-place stand on the medal podium for triple jump at a sectional final on May 17 after the first-place winner, trans athlete AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley High School, stepped off it. Footage of Hogan's stunt went viral and helped ignite awareness of the situation in California. Before that, during the Southern Sectional Prelims on May 10, several athletes wore shirts that read "Protect Girls Sports" and wielded picket signs that called out the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) for its policies, and some even spoke at a press conference that included activists opposing trans inclusion. However, Fox News Digital previously reported that CIF officials forced multiple girls wearing the shirts to remove them, and the CIF acknowledged the incidents occurred in a statement. Title IX expert Ryan Bangert senior vice president for strategic initiatives and special counsel to the president at the legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom told Fox News Digital that the girls have every right to peacefully protest during the weekend's competitions how they see fit. And any retaliation by the CIF against those who protest could be violations of the first amendment. "California needs to be cautious because every sovereign entity and every government entity has an obligation to follow the commands of the first amendment, and California is no different," Bangert said, adding that the state is under even more scrutiny if it tramples on the first amendment in defense of the "failing ideology" of biological males competing in girls' sports. If CIF officials do try to prevent the girls from competing, Bangert suggested there are legal steps they could take in response. "I think those girls would be well advised to consider all their legal rights and remedies in that situation," Bangert said about potential prevention or retaliation against girls who choose to protest this weekend. Follow Fox News Digital's sports coverage on X, and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Riley Gaines issues challenge to ex-ESPN host after he slammed 'MAGA stooge' over trans athlete fight
Conservative activist Riley Gaines has challenged former ESPN host Keith Olbermann to a race after he hit out at her for her support of Donald Trump. Gaines tied for fifth place with University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a biological male, in 2022 while swimming for the University of Kentucky in the 200-yard NCAA freestyle championship. The 25-year-old has since been outspoken against transgender athletes competing in women's sport, haling the president for his 'Keeping Men Out of Women's Sport' executive order earlier this year. This week, Olbermann, the ex-host of both MSNBC's 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' and ESPN's 'SportsCenter,' took aim at the former collegiate swimmer over her campaigning. Olbermann responded to a Fox News clip of Education Secretary Linda McMahon claiming that Gaines 'would have clearly won' her race if Gaines didn't have to compete against transgender athlete Thomas. '[Riley Gaines] finished 85th in the Olympic Trials,' Olbermann posted on X. 'She finished tied for 5th in the only race including a transgendered athlete. If there had been none she MIGHT have finished tied for 4th, or had 5th place to herself.' Gaines, a 12-time NCAA All-American, fired back at the sports commentator, noting she 'placed 85th at Olympic trials when I was 15/16.' 'I was one of the youngest there,' Gaines explained. 'And I placed 5th *in the nation* in a sport measured in .01s of a second without going a best. Would you say the 5th best college football player is objectively bad at their sport? 'No. You're just a misogynistic pig & an old, deranged man with a terminal case of TDS who can't hold down a job.' She went on to challenge Olbermann to back up his criticism by taking her on in a race for charity, Gaines told Fox Digital. She said that the event would be a 200-yard freestyle at a location of Olbermann's choice sometime before August 31 with proceeds going to a charity of the winner's choosing. Olbermann appeared to accept the challenge, branding the competition a 'brilliant idea.' 'A 66-year old man with an arthritic left knee and chronic stress fractures in the right foot... Somebody you could finally beat!' he taunted in response to the challenge. The heated online tiff comes after Gaines joined many in expressing outrage over a transgender athlete competing in girls' high school track and field in California. AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley, a biological male, won the women's long jump and triple jump at the California Interscholastic Federation Southern Section Masters Meet last week. Reese Hogan of Crean Lutheran High School, one of the opponents defeated by Hernandez, took the podium following the official ceremony. AB Hernandez of Jurupa Valley is making waves in track and field in contentious fashion The moment took off online, and earned praise from Gaines. In March, Hernandez drew backlash online after winning a triple jump event by three feet. In response to the backlash, Trump blasted California governor Gavin Newsom , who he called 'Newscum,' and called a transgender athlete's sporting domination in the state 'not fair and totally demeaning to women and girls.' 'Please be advised that large scale federal funding will be held back, maybe permanently,' Trump threatened on his Truth Social site. Then, without citing a specific legal basis, Trump wrote that 'I am ordering local authorities, if necessary, to not allow the transitioned person to compete in the State Finals. This is a totally ridiculous situation!!!' Gaines has been vocal in her opposition to allowing trans athletes to compete in women's sport and has dedicated the past two years to campaigning on the issue. She was invited to Trump's address to Congress in March when the president turned his focus to keeping trans athletes out of women's sports. The subject had been a big driving force in his election last November and Trump elected to highlight the story of Payton McNabb, a former high school volleyball player who was left with brain damage after being spiked in the face by a trans opponent, during his speech. Trump had previously surrounded himself with female athletes and activists, including Gaines, at the White House a month earlier to sign an executive order barring trans participation in women's sports. The order uses Title IX, a law against sex discrimination in taxpayer-funded education programs, to ban transgender girls and women from participating in female school sports activities.
The Independent
3 days ago
- General
- The Independent
Linda McMahon makes bold claim Riley Gaines (who tied 5th) would have won race if not for trans swimmer
made a bold claim that Riley Gaines, who tied 5th in a swimming race, would have won if not for transgender opponent. McMahon, the Trump -appointed Secretary of Education, spoke on the topic of trans women in sports live on Fox News, Wednesday (May 28). Gaines, a former swimmer who has become an anti-transgender activist, finished tied in fifth place in a 2022 NCAA race with Lia Thomas, a trans woman. Despite this, McMahon claimed that Gains was somehow cheated out of first place by Thomas, saying she would have 'clearly won' the race if not for one transgender swimmer.
CNN
3 days ago
- Health
- CNN
Do transgender women have an athletic advantage? Here's what the science does – and doesn't – say
What are the stakes when a fraction of a second, the length of an extended arm or the weight of a body in motion can mean the difference between victory and defeat? The question – at the center of disagreements over transgender athletes' participation in sports – has echoed from high school running tracks to Olympic arenas as lawmakers and sports bodies face intense pressure to weigh in on a debate over what fair play looks like. Although few trans athletes have reached elite levels of sports competition and even fewer have taken home top prizes, the success of a small group of trans women – particularly NCAA swimmer Lia Thomas – has fueled an increasingly vocal movement to ban trans women and girls from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity. Since 2020, more than half of US states have implemented bans on trans athlete participation. President Donald Trump has brought the effort to the White House, issuing an executive order aimed at eradicating trans women and girls from participation in women's sports and punishing institutions that are inclusive of trans athletes. Earlier this week, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over the participation of a high school track and field athlete. Opponents argue that adult transgender women – even those who have undergone treatment to lower their testosterone levels – retain unfair physical advantages after puberty that would deprive cisgender women of opportunities to succeed. Trans athletes and advocates, in turn, point to a lack of consistent, conclusive research to support this claim and the wide-reaching bans it's led to. They say trans people deserve the right to compete alongside their peers and reap the proven social, physical and mental benefits of sports. Research on trans people's athletic performance is scarce, and there have been no large-scale scientific studies on the topic or on how hormone therapies may affect their performance in specific sport categories, such as running or wrestling. And although existing research hints at how puberty and hormone therapy may affect a person's physical abilities, some experts say that far more data is needed to make confident conclusions about whether trans people in general hold advantages in their respective sports. Even among cisgender athletes, bodies and physical abilities vary widely, and traits that may be an advantage in one sport – such as grip strength or bone density – may not be an advantage in others. Even so, the fraught environment has driven sports bodies such as the NCAA to reverse its previous trans-inclusive policies and effectively ban trans women from women's sports, while still allowing trans men to play on men's teams. Here is what the research does – and doesn't – tell us about trans athletes. Complicating this debate is a lack of reliable data on how prevalent trans athletes are, whether in recreational youth sports or in cutthroat international competition. This has led advocacy groups on both sides to make wide-ranging and often conflicting estimates. In the most competitive arenas, however, figures indicate that transgender people make up a sliver of participating athletes and rarely take top prizes. Since the International Olympic Committee began permitting trans and nonbinary athletes to participate openly in 2003, fewer than a dozen have qualified. Most have competed on the team consistent with their gender assigned at birth, choosing to forgo hormone replacement therapy in order to qualify for competition, including nonbinary Team USA track and field athletes Nikki Hiltz and Raven Saunders. Only one out trans woman, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, has qualified for the Olympics, and she failed to complete a single lift. In US college and university athletics, top leagues have struggled to quantify trans athletes even as they craft policies banning most trans women from competing in women's categories. NCAA President Charlie Baker testified before the US Senate last year that he was aware of 'less than 10' transgender athletes competing in the league – a number amounting to less than .002% of its athletes. And when the NAIA, a smaller college association, effectively banned trans women from participating in most of its categories last year, a spokesperson told the Washington Post that it does not track whether any trans athletes participate on its teams. More than half of US states also have laws banning school-age trans students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law, estimates that as many as 122,000 trans youth age 13 to 17 could be participating in high school sports. It is unclear, however, how many play on the team that aligns with their gender identity, as many of them presumably live in states with bans in place. Puberty that is masculinizing can give an athlete substantial physical advantages, experts say. The difference-maker is testosterone, a sex hormone essential to male development. Every body produces testosterone, regardless of sex – even in the womb. For cisgender women, testosterone generally affects bone and muscle health, mood and energy, the menstrual cycle and fertility as well as libido. For cisgender men, it does many of the same things but also helps develop secondary sex characteristics. Some small studies have shown that when boys are exposed to higher levels of the hormone in the womb, it may confer a slight athletic advantage later on, but more research is needed. The real advantages come with puberty, said Dr. Bradley Anawalt, an endocrinologist with the University of Washington who has advised the NCAA. 'For practical purposes, prepubescent boys and girls, before age 10 or 11, they can pretty much compete in the same sports, and there's not big differences in size, power, speed,' Anawalt said. 'But at the time of puberty, when boys have their testosterone concentrations skyrocket in the blood, then you start to get significant differences between boys, girls, men, young women.' In childhood, boys' and girls' bodies and physical abilities are quite similar, experts say. When puberty begins, about age 11, a boy's testes will produce 30 times more testosterone than they did previously. Levels of circulating testosterone will then exceed that of females of any age by 15-fold, research shows. Exposure to high levels of testosterone spurs growth that may create an athletic advantage if a person does not undergo hormone therapies to limit its effects. A masculinizing puberty leads to thicker bones, more height, higher muscle mass, greater muscle strength, larger aerobic capacity and an increase in hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to working muscles, which is important for endurance. 'All of these characteristics lead to very, very substantial advantages in sports, and that is regardless of your gender identity or how you were identified at birth,' said Dr. Joanna Harper, a postdoctoral scientist researching transgender athletes in Oregon who has advised several sports' governing bodies, including the IOC. 'This applies to both transgender and intersex women who may have undergone this testosterone-filled masculinizing puberty.' The advantage that a masculinizing puberty may have on athletic performance depends on the sport, said Dr. Ada Cheung, an endocrinologist who has written extensively about trans athletes and has advised several sports organizations. 'Using upper-body strength as an example, there tends to be a rate of difference. So things like baseball pitching, the difference in speed, there may be a 40% to 50% difference. But if you are looking at something like swimming or rowing, it might be like a 10% difference,' said Cheung, a professional fellow in endocrinology at Melbourne Medical School. 'Understanding physical difference requires some nuance, though.' Cheung said sex differences also cannot account for all the varying abilities in sport. An individual's sex won't determine their success or failure in athletic competition, and trans athletes' abilities vary just like those of cisgender athletes. 'There are many, many differences in humans, regardless of gender, that give people athletic advantages,' she said, such as taller height, a greater wingspan, a higher proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers or more flexibility. An athlete will also have an advantage with more access to training or better nutrition. 'It's hard to put the diversity of human experience into just two boxes,' Cheung said. Gender-affirming hormone therapy is a medical treatment that uses hormones to help people align their physical characteristics with their gender identity. For trans women, it includes estrogen plus a testosterone blocker. Although a masculinizing puberty may confer advantages, an October 2023 review of trans women who seek out such therapy said that many of the advantages are 'reduced, if not erased, over time' if they undergo gender-affirming hormone therapy. Trans women who undergo gender-affirming hormone therapy see a significant decline in their athletic abilities, Harper said. She conducted a 2015 study of eight trans runners and found that they did better than cisgender women before hormone therapy; after, they were about the same. The rate at which different aspects of trans women's bodies change varies. Within just three or four months of starting gender-affirming hormone therapy, trans women's hemoglobin will fall from typical male to typical female values. After two years, a study of nonathletic people showed. there's no significant advantage for physical performance measured by running time in trans women. By four years, there was no advantage in sit-ups, either. Push-up performance also declined in trans woman, but they had a statistical advantage relative to cis women. As far as muscle strength and muscle mass, trans women experience reductions in both after hormone therapy, research shows. But it's a slower process than with something like hemoglobin, Harper said, and it's unclear how much strength they lose even with hormone therapy. More research is needed to pinpoint that answer, she said. 'In absolute sense, trans women will still be stronger than cisgender or typical women, even after a prolonged period of testosterone suppression, even after adjusting for weight, though a trans woman will have more muscle mass for about one to three years after testosterone has been suppressed,' Harper said. Cisgender women may even have a small advantage over trans women in sports in that trans women lose muscle strength, but their larger bones and bigger height stay the same, so their bodies have to work harder to move. Cheung said the general thinking is that after about two years or more of testosterone suppression and estradiol treatments, a transgender woman's physical performance should be 'quite similar' to a cisgender woman's, although more rigorous research is necessary to be completely sure. Studies on members of the military found that trans women's physical performance declined when they went on hormone treatment. In a 2021 study of 46 trans women in the US Air Force, they performed 31% more pushups and 15% more sit-ups in one minute and ran 1½ miles 21% faster than cis women before they started hormone therapy. After two years of hormones, the pushup and sit-up differences disappeared, although the trans women were still 12% faster. A 2022 study of 228 trans women in the US Air Force found that they had had worse performance in push-ups compared with cisgender men, but with little difference in sit-ups or run times, before starting hormone therapy. The trans women performed significantly better than cisgender women after one year of hormone therapy. At two years, trans women and cis women had equivalent run times. At three years, sit-ups were at the same level. Trans women still did better with push-ups even at the four-year end point. However, it isn't clear that the results of those studies would be borne out in civilian athletic competition. Facing immense pressure from activist groups, athletes and politicians, sports associations are trying to craft policies for trans athletes without significant data on how they perform in their specific categories, such as soccer or basketball. 'If you're trying to be 'fair' – however fair is defined – then you need to look at individual athletic activities directly,' Dr. Joshua Safer, executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, told CNN last year. 'It would be a matter of taking transgender people who participate in sports and looking at them before and after some of their treatments and really measuring differences, especially in common sports.' Such studies may be especially difficult to carry out, given how few elite trans athletes are in each sport, Safer said. But some researchers have also pointed out that while science plays an important role, the question at the heart of the debate is a cultural one: What does fairness look like – and is the playing field ever truly fair? 'This is that social justice issue where science is just not going to satisfy everybody,' Anawalt told UW Medicine in 2023. 'I worry that scientific facts will be used to bludgeon each other and that we won't come to a consensus because our feelings are so heightened.' He believes that no amount of research will be able to deliver criteria that will satisfy all athletes. 'No matter how much science you throw into this, you're going to still be left with people asking questions, 'Well, what about this? What about that?'' Anawalt told CNN. 'It's just going to come down to us making some decisions about what we think is fair and what's not fair. 'It is an opportunity to ask the question: What really is the importance of sports?'
CNN
3 days ago
- Health
- CNN
Do transgender women have an athletic advantage? Here's what the science does – and doesn't – say
LGBTQ issuesFacebookTweetLink Follow What are the stakes when a fraction of a second, the length of an extended arm or the weight of a body in motion can mean the difference between victory and defeat? The question – at the center of disagreements over transgender athletes' participation in sports – has echoed from high school running tracks to Olympic arenas as lawmakers and sports bodies face intense pressure to weigh in on a debate over what fair play looks like. Although few trans athletes have reached elite levels of sports competition and even fewer have taken home top prizes, the success of a small group of trans women – particularly NCAA swimmer Lia Thomas – has fueled an increasingly vocal movement to ban trans women and girls from participating on teams consistent with their gender identity. Since 2020, more than half of US states have implemented bans on trans athlete participation. President Donald Trump has brought the effort to the White House, issuing an executive order aimed at eradicating trans women and girls from participation in women's sports and punishing institutions that are inclusive of trans athletes. Earlier this week, Trump threatened to withhold federal funding from California over the participation of a high school track and field athlete. Opponents argue that adult transgender women – even those who have undergone treatment to lower their testosterone levels – retain unfair physical advantages after puberty that would deprive cisgender women of opportunities to succeed. Trans athletes and advocates, in turn, point to a lack of consistent, conclusive research to support this claim and the wide-reaching bans it's led to. They say trans people deserve the right to compete alongside their peers and reap the proven social, physical and mental benefits of sports. Research on trans people's athletic performance is scarce, and there have been no large-scale scientific studies on the topic or on how hormone therapies may affect their performance in specific sport categories, such as running or wrestling. And although existing research hints at how puberty and hormone therapy may affect a person's physical abilities, some experts say that far more data is needed to make confident conclusions about whether trans people in general hold advantages in their respective sports. Even among cisgender athletes, bodies and physical abilities vary widely, and traits that may be an advantage in one sport – such as grip strength or bone density – may not be an advantage in others. Even so, the fraught environment has driven sports bodies such as the NCAA to reverse its previous trans-inclusive policies and effectively ban trans women from women's sports, while still allowing trans men to play on men's teams. Here is what the research does – and doesn't – tell us about trans athletes. Complicating this debate is a lack of reliable data on how prevalent trans athletes are, whether in recreational youth sports or in cutthroat international competition. This has led advocacy groups on both sides to make wide-ranging and often conflicting estimates. In the most competitive arenas, however, figures indicate that transgender people make up a sliver of participating athletes and rarely take top prizes. Since the International Olympic Committee began permitting trans and nonbinary athletes to participate openly in 2003, fewer than a dozen have qualified. Most have competed on the team consistent with their gender assigned at birth, choosing to forgo hormone replacement therapy in order to qualify for competition, including nonbinary Team USA track and field athletes Nikki Hiltz and Raven Saunders. Only one out trans woman, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, has qualified for the Olympics, and she failed to complete a single lift. In US college and university athletics, top leagues have struggled to quantify trans athletes even as they craft policies banning most trans women from competing in women's categories. NCAA President Charlie Baker testified before the US Senate last year that he was aware of 'less than 10' transgender athletes competing in the league – a number amounting to less than .002% of its athletes. And when the NAIA, a smaller college association, effectively banned trans women from participating in most of its categories last year, a spokesperson told the Washington Post that it does not track whether any trans athletes participate on its teams. More than half of US states also have laws banning school-age trans students from competing on sports teams that align with their gender identity. The Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA Law, estimates that as many as 122,000 trans youth age 13 to 17 could be participating in high school sports. It is unclear, however, how many play on the team that aligns with their gender identity, as many of them presumably live in states with bans in place. Puberty that is masculinizing can give an athlete substantial physical advantages, experts say. The difference-maker is testosterone, a sex hormone essential to male development. Every body produces testosterone, regardless of sex – even in the womb. For cisgender women, testosterone generally affects bone and muscle health, mood and energy, the menstrual cycle and fertility as well as libido. For cisgender men, it does many of the same things but also helps develop secondary sex characteristics. Some small studies have shown that when boys are exposed to higher levels of the hormone in the womb, it may confer a slight athletic advantage later on, but more research is needed. The real advantages come with puberty, said Dr. Bradley Anawalt, an endocrinologist with the University of Washington who has advised the NCAA. 'For practical purposes, prepubescent boys and girls, before age 10 or 11, they can pretty much compete in the same sports, and there's not big differences in size, power, speed,' Anawalt said. 'But at the time of puberty, when boys have their testosterone concentrations skyrocket in the blood, then you start to get significant differences between boys, girls, men, young women.' In childhood, boys' and girls' bodies and physical abilities are quite similar, experts say. When puberty begins, about age 11, a boy's testes will produce 30 times more testosterone than they did previously. Levels of circulating testosterone will then exceed that of females of any age by 15-fold, research shows. Exposure to high levels of testosterone spurs growth that may create an athletic advantage if a person does not undergo hormone therapies to limit its effects. A masculinizing puberty leads to thicker bones, more height, higher muscle mass, greater muscle strength, larger aerobic capacity and an increase in hemoglobin, a protein in red blood cells that carries oxygen to working muscles, which is important for endurance. 'All of these characteristics lead to very, very substantial advantages in sports, and that is regardless of your gender identity or how you were identified at birth,' said Dr. Joanna Harper, a postdoctoral scientist researching transgender athletes in Oregon who has advised several sports' governing bodies, including the IOC. 'This applies to both transgender and intersex women who may have undergone this testosterone-filled masculinizing puberty.' The advantage that a masculinizing puberty may have on athletic performance depends on the sport, said Dr. Ada Cheung, an endocrinologist who has written extensively about trans athletes and has advised several sports organizations. 'Using upper-body strength as an example, there tends to be a rate of difference. So things like baseball pitching, the difference in speed, there may be a 40% to 50% difference. But if you are looking at something like swimming or rowing, it might be like a 10% difference,' said Cheung, a professional fellow in endocrinology at Melbourne Medical School. 'Understanding physical difference requires some nuance, though.' Cheung said sex differences also cannot account for all the varying abilities in sport. An individual's sex won't determine their success or failure in athletic competition, and trans athletes' abilities vary just like those of cisgender athletes. 'There are many, many differences in humans, regardless of gender, that give people athletic advantages,' she said, such as taller height, a greater wingspan, a higher proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers or more flexibility. An athlete will also have an advantage with more access to training or better nutrition. 'It's hard to put the diversity of human experience into just two boxes,' Cheung said. Gender-affirming hormone therapy is a medical treatment that uses hormones to help people align their physical characteristics with their gender identity. For trans women, it includes estrogen plus a testosterone blocker. Although a masculinizing puberty may confer advantages, an October 2023 review of trans women who seek out such therapy said that many of the advantages are 'reduced, if not erased, over time' if they undergo gender-affirming hormone therapy. Trans women who undergo gender-affirming hormone therapy see a significant decline in their athletic abilities, Harper said. She conducted a 2015 study of eight trans runners and found that they did better than cisgender women before hormone therapy; after, they were about the same. The rate at which different aspects of trans women's bodies change varies. Within just three or four months of starting gender-affirming hormone therapy, trans women's hemoglobin will fall from typical male to typical female values. After two years, a study of nonathletic people showed. there's no significant advantage for physical performance measured by running time in trans women. By four years, there was no advantage in sit-ups, either. Push-up performance also declined in trans woman, but they had a statistical advantage relative to cis women. As far as muscle strength and muscle mass, trans women experience reductions in both after hormone therapy, research shows. But it's a slower process than with something like hemoglobin, Harper said, and it's unclear how much strength they lose even with hormone therapy. More research is needed to pinpoint that answer, she said. 'In absolute sense, trans women will still be stronger than cisgender or typical women, even after a prolonged period of testosterone suppression, even after adjusting for weight, though a trans woman will have more muscle mass for about one to three years after testosterone has been suppressed,' Harper said. Cisgender women may even have a small advantage over trans women in sports in that trans women lose muscle strength, but their larger bones and bigger height stay the same, so their bodies have to work harder to move. Cheung said the general thinking is that after about two years or more of testosterone suppression and estradiol treatments, a transgender woman's physical performance should be 'quite similar' to a cisgender woman's, although more rigorous research is necessary to be completely sure. Studies on members of the military found that trans women's physical performance declined when they went on hormone treatment. In a 2021 study of 46 trans women in the US Air Force, they performed 31% more pushups and 15% more sit-ups in one minute and ran 1½ miles 21% faster than cis women before they started hormone therapy. After two years of hormones, the pushup and sit-up differences disappeared, although the trans women were still 12% faster. A 2022 study of 228 trans women in the US Air Force found that they had had worse performance in push-ups compared with cisgender men, but with little difference in sit-ups or run times, before starting hormone therapy. The trans women performed significantly better than cisgender women after one year of hormone therapy. At two years, trans women and cis women had equivalent run times. At three years, sit-ups were at the same level. Trans women still did better with push-ups even at the four-year end point. However, it isn't clear that the results of those studies would be borne out in civilian athletic competition. Facing immense pressure from activist groups, athletes and politicians, sports associations are trying to craft policies for trans athletes without significant data on how they perform in their specific categories, such as soccer or basketball. 'If you're trying to be 'fair' – however fair is defined – then you need to look at individual athletic activities directly,' Dr. Joshua Safer, executive director of the Mount Sinai Center for Transgender Medicine and Surgery, told CNN last year. 'It would be a matter of taking transgender people who participate in sports and looking at them before and after some of their treatments and really measuring differences, especially in common sports.' Such studies may be especially difficult to carry out, given how few elite trans athletes are in each sport, Safer said. But some researchers have also pointed out that while science plays an important role, the question at the heart of the debate is a cultural one: What does fairness look like – and is the playing field ever truly fair? 'This is that social justice issue where science is just not going to satisfy everybody,' Anawalt told UW Medicine in 2023. 'I worry that scientific facts will be used to bludgeon each other and that we won't come to a consensus because our feelings are so heightened.' He believes that no amount of research will be able to deliver criteria that will satisfy all athletes. 'No matter how much science you throw into this, you're going to still be left with people asking questions, 'Well, what about this? What about that?'' Anawalt told CNN. 'It's just going to come down to us making some decisions about what we think is fair and what's not fair. 'It is an opportunity to ask the question: What really is the importance of sports?'
