Martina Navratilova, the tennis legend who turned into a women’s sports activist, just went on the offensive against Austin Killips, the transgender bicycle racer who won a recent women’s cycling race in North Carolina, the “Belgian Waffle Ride North Carolina.”
Killips, for reference, won the race by a whopping five minutes. Killips had led the race for most of it, fell behind one of the other racers around the halfway point, then had a second wind and raced toward the finish line and well past the other racers.
Navratilova, posting about Killips’ win on Twitter, said, “what a joke.” Check that out here:
What a joke. https://t.co/VBZzvjNL62
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) June 11, 2023
In another post, Navratilova went after the trans influencer who flashed the camera at a White House Pride Month event, saying, “I am sorry but this is not ok. On the beach- have at it. Anywhere else in public-nope!” She then added, in a subsequent quote tweet, “The T are doing a huge disservice to LGBT. This is unacceptable.”
The T are doing a huge disservice to LGBT. This is unacceptable. https://t.co/5EImZE4Or2
— Martina Navratilova (@Martina) June 13, 2023
This isn’t the first time that Navratilova has spoken out on the trans athlete issue. She also did so in the wake of World Athletics, the international governing body for track and field events, announcing that transgender women would be prohibited from from competing against biological females.
Commenting on that decision, Navratilova said that she supported the decision and suggested a potential solution to the continual fights over who can compete when and in what sports, saying that there should be “biological” categories and “open” categories. Writing about that, she said, “In the wake of World Athletics’ announcement, I think the best idea would be to have ‘biological female’ and ‘biological girls’ categories and then an ‘open’ category.”
Continuing, she added that that solution, which is already being explored for certain sports in Britain, would serve as a solution by providing a “catch all” category for all comers, saying, “It would be a category for all-comers: men who identify as men; women who identify as women; women who identify as men; men who identify as women; non-binary — it would be a catch-all. This is already being explored in athletics and swimming in Britain.”
Navratilova then added that the decision would let biological women compete against biological women, giving them a better shot at winning, saying, “Biological females are most likely to compete in the biological female category, as that’s their best shot at winning and it maintains the principle of fairness. With an ‘open’ category there are no question marks, no provisos, no asterisks, no doubts. It’s a simple solution.”
She added that puberty, in her view, gives biological male athletes a large edge over biological women athletes, saying, “Once somebody has gone through male puberty, there is no way to erase that physical advantage. You cannot simply turn back the clock, for instance by trying to lower testosterone levels.”
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, in a statement released at the time about the situation, said, “Decisions are always difficult when they involve conflicting needs and rights between different groups, but we continue to take the view that we must maintain fairness for female athletes above all other considerations.”
Featured image credit: By Angela George, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16699305
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