himespau 

@Heathpack who has competed at least once in the past has made her feeling known in the 33. She and McKinnon used to "debate" the topic.

bbbean 

We get that, or at least some of us do. But not performing like a man doesn't make someone a woman or put them on a level playing field with people who were born female.

I fully support people's right to transition, and I know that gender dysphoria is a real thing. But if anyone knows that gender isn't a light switch dichotomy, it should be transgender individuals. I'm afraid one of the things one must sacrifice to be a transwoman is the opportunity to compete in sports on an equal footing with either men or women.

OBoile

Based on the many comments comparing men to women it would seem that most people here don't get it. That or they insist on stating the obvious.
True. And, as I've said above, how much of an advantage a trans woman would have likely varies considerably based on the sport/event in question.
Also true. Unfortunately, sports is (a "light switch dichotomy"). Having a specific category (or multiple categories) for any unique gender likely isn't feasible in a practical sense, and also would lead to a whole host of political issues.
Why? I mean, I get that things will likely never be perfectly equal. But do you really think it isn't possible to make them "close enough" so as to not really matter? Many things already aren't equal. Funding, equipment, age (IIRC this category is 35-44, and you can't tell me a 44 year old isn't at a disadvantage against a 35 year old). Do you not think there could be restrictions on trans athletes that make their advantage less than, or comparable to all of these?

Heathpack 

Lol yes I have competed "at least once" in a bike race.

https://www.bikeforums.net/21169189-post2248.html

Read the full text article that I link to in the live link to my post in the 33. Its one study but literally the *only* study that looks at strength in transgender women as they transition from male to female. There have been studies looking at aerobic laboratory parameters in transgender women (they lose aerobic ability with hormonal transition and effectively drop into the female range of aerobic performance). However, based on the study I refer to in my post that I link to above, there is no loss of strength.

Aerobic ability is very important in cycling, sure. But so is strength and sprint ability. You would *expect* a transgender woman to have a killer sprint and to potentially do well in crits and especially track sprinting. Exactly as we see for Rachel McKinnon,

As to the argument upthread that its only one person so its not an "important' issue, I'm sorry but NO. If you want to believe bike racing is important, then its important for everybody who races, including the woman who trained very hard for UCI Masters Track Worlds only to lose her gold medal to a person with a clear unfair advantage. If you're going to argue that fairness in sport doesn't matter, then just allow doping, cheating and gladiator tactics. Smart idea. Because once the public became aware of the magnitude of doping in professional bike racing, interest in the sport really took off. So much interest in professional and amateur cycling today! So many people taking up bike racing! Total sarcasm of course.

An unfair playing field is bad for the sport, and in this instance, uniquely unfair to women who rightly don't embrace the sport of bike racing. There's just a huge sentiment in the sport that women are irrelevant and expendable.

himespau 

Sorry, I meant that I was pretty sure that you'd competed against a transwoman in a time trial. I just left a few words out when responding to someone who asked what cis women who had raced against transwomen felt about the presence of transwomen in their races.

Heathpack 

Oh. I've never actually raced against a transwoman. I've raced against professionals three times, including the pro World Champion (Amber Neben) in my discipline. Oy.

When I make my arguments against transwomen racing with ciswomen, my strongest argument is not against this in TTing. For TTing a killer sprint is irrelevant (I'd argue that physiologically its actually counterproductive), aerobic effort is king (queen?) and large body size is a disavantage. You could make a rational argument that in my particular discipline (TTing), transwomen would have no particular advantage and enough disadvantage that it would make sense to let them race with ciswomen. I'm not arguing my points because they affect me personally. I'm arguing my points because I understand the physiology, I've read the available literature, and I "get" the fundamentals of which types of bike racing are most affected by the issue-- which is quite likely anything in which a killer sprint is important. Road racing, crits, and for God's sake so obviously track sprinting.

TTing and individual pursuit are the only disciplines in bike racing where transwomen racing against ciswomen might make sense, and I wouldn't have a huge problem with available evidence of transwomen competing with ciswomen in TTs, as long as their testosterone levels were in the typical female range.

Maelochs

So ... some of them aren't very good ... but those aren't the ones that are creating controversy by stealing results from cis-female athletes. The ones who have serious physical advantages are attracting attention .... but any time there are a limited number of spots on a team, and trans people take spots because of inborn advantages ... we might not hear about it Not very girl who loses a spot on JV volleyball creates a media storm ... but that isn't really the issue anyway.

Miele Man

Why not start a new classification and call it "Transgender Class"? Then the transgender people can compete against other transgender people.

Cheers

KraneXL

Now the question begs: do they identify as transgender? I thought it was just male or female?

one4smoke

OBoile

Human rights should always trump your hobby (and for master's racers, along with the 99.9% of us who aren't good enough to go pro that's all this is). If you care so much about a result that you're willing to discriminate in order to achieve it, you need to take step back and examine your priorities.

Somewhere between 20 and 40% of transgender people will attempt suicide at some point in their lives. I don't particularly care for Dr McKinnon or her extreme (even to me) views, but I wonder: how many trans kids read about her and thought "cool" only to then read the comments in threads like this and feel like absolute crap.
Ironic given how you feel about this woman and her right to compete.

OBoile

Again, is this a joke? Girls get cut from teams in favour of other girls with inborn genetic advantages all the time.

Heathpack 

Is it “discrimination” to disallow men from racing in women’s fields? No. Of course not. That would be a silly thing to believe.

There’s a physiologic basis for these distinctions. A very valid physiologic distinction.

It’s not about wins. It’s about the fundamental core concept of racing and competition. The idea of setting race fields up such that prepared competitors have a shot a winning, or doing well, is absolutely imperitive. Without that, people start to see racing or competing as invalid. And when it’s invalid, people lose interest.

Would my life crumble and fall to pieces without bike racing? Nope. I’d just do something else. But if you care about there being a sport of bike racing, whether as a spectator or a participant, you have to care about fairness in the sport because if you don’t, the sport will fade into irrelevancy.

I am about as liberal in my social views as people come. But I also have a brain and the ability to consider the paradigm of different groups and weigh multiple factors and then form a judgement. I support transgender rights and also women’s right and human rights in general. I am sympathetic to the plight of the suicidal. But that doesn’t mean that you wreck sport for the 99.9% of women who are not transgender. In the same way that the able-bodied are excluded from the paraOlympics, men are excluded from women’s fields, and adults are excluded from children’s fields.

Gender is a complicated thing. If you’re an outlier on the gender spectrum, that’s a tough lot in life. All kinds of people have a tough lot in life, though, in varied ways. As a society we should do what we can to mitigate that tough lot for as many people as we can, to the greatest extent possible. But not to the extent that we harm society in general. Is sport for women and girls a positive thing? Yes. Is that something worth preserving? Absolutely yes.

It may be difficult to come up with an elegant solution as to where transgender women should compete in sport. It may be that in track sprinting they compete with men but in pursuit they compete with women. But you’ve got to accept that transgender people are outliers on the physiology scale and as such the reality of life is that they may not fit elegantly into any race field. This is not the fault of society, its just biology.

Heathpack 

The issue is about the *magnitude* of the genetic advantage. In most sports, the male physiology is recognized to be enough of an advantage that there’s no point in men and women competing together. There is of course variation in the genetic advantage that one woman has over another, but the magnitude of the difference generally is not as large. Potentially that difference can be overcome with training, practice and preparation to an extent that the difference between male physiology and female physiology cannot.

So: not a joke. Just some coomon sense understanding of the reality of life.

DrIsotope

Maybe take a page from auto racing? One of the few gender-less pursuits out there, where grid placement is determined by qualifying time.

Everybody rides a qualifier, then their time determines their placement. But do it like drag racing, where if you "break out," meaning your race lap time is quicker than your qualifier, you get DQ'd.

It would probably only work for track events. But then everybody would race against who they should be racing against-- performance wise.

Maelochs

I guess you have no problem with performance-enhancing drugs, either? The idea of a level playing field is not a very complicated concept for most.

Done here. We have all stated our views. No point in continuing ... people like you, all you can do is ridicule people with different views at this point, so you are plainly done, too.

bbbean 

If you care so much about winning an argument you're wiling to use false dichotomies and knock down straw men, you need to step back and examine your priorities.

We discriminate all over the place in sports to make things reasonably fair. We discriminate on the basis of gender, age, professional status, experience, aptitude, etc. A 60 year old cat 4 woman won't be in the same race as a 25 year old elite pro. The race wouldn't be fair, and we all know who would win. Women who compete deserve to compete on as fair a playing field as possible. That means competing against people born as women.

As has been stated elsewhere, gender dysphoria is a real thing. The challenges involved in gender reassignment are huge and daunting. I understand that people put the personal lives, their professional lives, even their family relationships on the line to treat their gender dysphoria. Anyone transitioning knows there are a lot of sacrifices to be made. One of them (IMHO) should be the right to compete in sports where your birth gender gives you an advantage over your fellow competitors.

That's not a human rights issue. It's a competitive issue and an issue of fairness.

OBoile

But sport isn't being wrecked for "99.9%" of women. No doubt the woman that would have otherwise finished first is likely frustrated, but even for her I doubt very much the sport is wrecked. Her quest for a master's world championship is wrecked, but I hope that she does not define her entire sporting experience by one result. I'm sure the 2nd and 3rd place finishers would have been happy to be one spot higher but, again, I highly doubt their whole sporting experience is wrecked. The rest of the women, in all the other events and age categories were unaffected.

Balance that with the fact that someone gets to compete (and in this case experience the joy of winning) in a sport against people of their own gender. And competing, as you no doubt know better than me, encompasses the entire journey not just the actual competition itself.

I agree with everything except the implication that women's sport is under some kind of existential threat. It isn't currently.


There are plenty of genetic factors that are far, far greater than male vs female. The top female cyclists are more genetically gifted (including any "penalty" they get from being female) than the vast majority of males. Despite being an above average male cyclist, my VO2 max will never come close to Annemiek van Vleuten's. And the gap between us is far, far larger than the typical male/female gap. She has, straight up, far more natural ability than 95% of male cyclists. If we were dividing people based purely on genetic ability, she, along with just about every female pro, would be racing in the tougher division.


We divide between male and female because it's convenient, socially acceptable, and is pretty obvious (or at least it was until we started to learn more about genetics). Humans are visually driven in many cases (hence why we get ignorant people posting pictures here as though that tells the whole story). There is a value in having women see a woman standing atop the podium. But for most sports, the difference between the sexes, while large relative to the difference between one elite athlete and another, is quite small compared to the difference between an elite athlete and a typical person or even from a pretty good athlete to an average one.

Sport has never been, nor ever will be, fair from a genetic perspective. But I believe we can achieve a solution that allows trans women to compete in a way that is pretty close to fair. Certainly more fair than the 5'2" girl who gets cut from the JV volleyball team in favour of the 6'3" one. The current solution isn't perfect. I suspect Dr McKinnon had a fairly significant advantage. But we won't get there without starting somewhere.

smullen

If you are born with an Outie, you are male and should use the Mens restroom and compete in male events or ones that have co-ed entrants.
If you are born with an Innie, you are female and should use the Womens restroom and compete in womens events or ones that have co-ed entrants.

JMHO, YMMV...

OBoile

I see nothing false about my statement here.
And yet, no one here starts threads freaking out when a 44 year old is forced to compete against a 35 year old. I wonder why? It clearly isn't fair.

There has always been a balance between logistics and fairness. You, like many others here, seem to think that it is impossible for trans women to compete against cisgendered women in a reasonably fair manor. Why are you so eager to dismiss this out of hand without even trying?

I don't think the current system is fair, but the solution isn't to ban trans women from competing, but rather to refine the requirements they need to fulfill in order to compete.

Wrong, it is both, which is why I care enough to keep arguing my point.

OBoile

I have no problem with performance enhancing drugs when they are used within the rules of the sport. In cycling they are cheating which I have a problem with.

I don't have a problem with a rich country (or a rich individual) spending a lot of money to make sure their track bikes are more aerodynamic than the competition's despite this creating a non-level playing field. That's because the idea of a perfectly level playing field is a myth. I'm simply willing to accept a small degree of unfairness in order to include a group of highly marginalized people.

bbbean 

Do you compete? I ask because I can't imagine someone who puts in the years (yes, years) of work to make it to the top of their sport views losing a world title as "one result." I also know (from talking to female racers) that many women see a transwoman taking a women's world title as akin to being beaten by someone who is openly doping.


You're cherry picking stats. Men are faster cyclists than women. This isn't opinion, it's simple fact confirmed by race results, world record times, TT results, etc. I wish McKinnon the best, but she doesn't belong in a race with women who were born women, and she certainly shouldn't wear the women's rainbow jersey.

OBoile

I competed for roughly a decade in powerlifting at up to the national level. So yes, I put in "years" of work and I saw many people who were way too obsessed with winning. It's still a hobby. And if your entire enjoyment is the result of a single competition, and not the journey to get there, then you're doing it wrong.

Since you mention doping, I'd be shocked if there weren't multiple winners from this competition who were on PEDs. That's a far, far bigger threat to women's cycling than transgender athletes.



Yeah. VO2 max is a pretty obscure thing when it comes to cycling performance. No one pays attention to it at all. Feel free to substitute FTP, lung capacity, LT1, LT2, Watts/kg, or anything else. The point will remain the same.

No, men are faster *on average* than women. But individual variance between members of a given gender are often far, far larger than the differences between genders.

Perhaps we should look at some numbers.

As I understand it, the best flying female 200m time is 10.154 seconds.

F35-39 SPRINT - Qualifying Round - Result 2019

Rachel McKinnon did 11.649. That gap of roughly 1.5 seconds is 50% larger than the gap between the men's and women's WRs. None of these women are anywhere near what the best women in the world can do and I feel pretty confident to say that if any of the best women wanted to keep competing as a Masters rider, they would smash this record pretty easily (thanks largely to their genetics).

Her 2nd place finisher, the woman who got "robbed" was 12.063 seconds. The gap of ~0.4 seconds was smaller than the gap between 3rd and 4th. I'll admit I got the age ranges wrong, as 40-44 is a separate category. Incidentally, the gap from Rachel to the winner of the 40-44 category was smaller too. That's right, the woman who was "robbed" is lucky they don't allow 40-44 year olds to compete with the younger women as she was slower than the top rider in that category.
F40-44 SPRINT - Qualifying Round - Result 2019
She was also lucky they didn't allow 45-49 year olds to compete as she was slower than the best rider in that category too.
F45-49 SPRINT - Qualifying Round - Result 2019
Even the 50-54 year old category had a rider faster than her.
F50-54 SPRINT - Qualifying Round - Result 2019
And, wait for it, the 55-59 age group had a rider that qualified faster than her. In fact, Rachel aside, this category seems to be faster than the women 20 years younger than them.
F55-59 SPRINT - Qualifying Round - Result 2019

Also, based on the numbers (only one category actually has enough people to eliminate riders before the quarter finals), it's pretty clear that you don't have to be elite to ride here. It's pretty clear that Dr McKinnon won as much due to a lack of competition as anything. So, across 6 age categories, there was one woman who was deprived of a world title due to the participation of trans women and she would only have gotten a title because she didn't have to compete against women who qualify for a senior's discount at restaurants. But hey, let's all get worked up about how a trans women managed to be a medium sized fish in a very small pond.
But a 35 year old who is slower than a 55 year old should? Let's not pretend a master's rainbow jersey in one of the more obscure events in cycling is more than it is.

If it weren't for the media blowing this massively out of proportion (and bringing a lot of publicity to the sport I might add), no one would know or care who had this jersey.

bbbean 

Again, you are cherry picking. Races are decided by who crosses the finish line first, not by who has the highest VO2 max (or FTP, or fastest sprint, or watts/kg, or LT, or any other single measure). Winning a race is vastly overdetermined and pointing out that men and women may be similar in one particular measure doesn't make men and women comparable bike racers.


Those numbers are irrelevant. Compare apples to apples. Compare elite to elite - men's WR vs women's WR:

24 hour - Men - 585 miles; Women 445 miles
Hour - Men - 34 miles; Women - 29 miles

And the men's flying 200m WR is 9.1 seconds.

You can find similar results in various distance time trials. Compare winning speeds when men and women race the same stages. Ask a race organizer running multiple fields on the same course how they keep the men and women from overlapping during the race.

Regardless of whether men and women are similar in any (or even every) other respect, the winners of men's races are faster than the races of women's races at the same level.

FWIW, you keep diminishing master's racing and suggesting this is a trivial "hobby" to the competitors. If that was true, why is it so important to McKinnon that she wear the rainbow jersey? She could outride everyone else at the local gran fondo and no one would complain. Maybe McKinnon realizes that those rainbow stripes represent the accomplishment of a lifetime for the elite few who wear them, and taking advantage of her biological advantages takes something away from the competitors who spend years working to get to that level. She should realize that her activism stirs up opposition even among people who otherwise support her transition and accept her how she chooses to present herself (notice the pronouns?).

OBoile

Races are decided by who crosses the finish line first, not by who has the "larger heart", "larger lung volume", "the most watts", or "the most muscle mass".

Unlike everyone else (with exception of burnthesheep), I at least referenced actual performance metrics as opposed to physiological differences who's marginal benefit is extremely difficult to quantify. It sounds pretty silly to call that "cherry picking", particularly when you haven't accused anyone else of that.

The simple fact is, there are many women who are biologically superior at cycling than the average man. Again: the difference in ability between the sexes is far smaller than the variability of ability within a given sex.

If/when a trans women competes in a 24 hour, or 1 hour race this would be relevant.

Yeah, I referenced this in my post when pointing out that the gap between Rachel and the women's WR was roughly 50% larger than the gap between the men's and women's WRs.
Great. I'm not sure that's relevant to the event in question. Nor do we have any data about how trans women perform in those distances outside of the n=1 value from the video I posted above.
I've never disputed this.
I don't think it's trivial, but it is a hobby. None of these women are being paid for what they do.
It's important that she be allowed to participate. Unless it causes undue hardship (and IMO, it doesn't), to refuse this is discrimination.
I'd be willing to bet some women would complain about it being unfair.
I don't know how she feels about this. I would hope that people involved in this realize they have likely accomplished far more significant things in their lifetime.
I think she has as much of a right to win as anyone else. Plus, based on these results, I'm fairly confident there are many cisgendered women who could win after a fairly short amount of time spent training.
I don't agree with all of what Dr McKinnon says but that doesn't change my belief that she, and other trans women, should be allowed to compete while following the restrictions put in place by the UCI which is based on the best currently available science.