Originally Posted by queerpunk

Right?


As a bike racer, I've come to terms with disappointment a lot - being beaten by people who outclass the rest of the field; being beaten by full time athletes who just get to train more and recover better; athletes who don't have to travel to this race that we're both at; or natural athletes who just start out a ****load faster, stronger, and better than I did. I think that the stuff around sex and gender with trans participation hits some competitive people hard because we like to think that we have a shot of winning, and we like to think that there is something fundamentally disqualifying about people who beat us: to too many bike racers, winners are either dopers or sandbaggers. I've seen a lot of bike racers (and surely it's similar in other sports) try to figure out how to ensure that racing is a "level playing field" - which, honestly, means that a lot of people want to ensure that they're only racing races where they have a reasonable shot at winning or medaling.


But sports aren't about a fair playing field or having a shot at winning. For me, it's about coming to terms with the certainty that I am not the best - that there are a lot of people who are better than me - and the more I try to slice away at the competition to remove them from the starting line in the first place, the more I smell bull**** on my breath - you know?


Cycling lets you touch the hem of your dreams. A guy I race with at ttown just won the World Cup Scratch Race; USA Cycling has been sending riders I've beaten to World Cups and other international races. I can, for a moment, flirt with the notion that I could have been there too. But then I remember that everything's more complicated than that.