‘I Wouldn’t Even Place’ in Race Against Trans Athletes: Aussie Olympic Gold Medallist

‘I Wouldn’t Even Place’ in Race Against Trans Athletes: Aussie Olympic Gold Medallist
Swimmer Emily Seebohm is seen posing for a photograph after a training session in the nets at the National Cricket Centre in Brisbane, Wednesday, March 20, 2019. AAP Image/Darren England
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Australian Olympic gold medallist Emily Seebohm has voiced concerns about the lack of fairness in competitive sports where transgender athletes are allowed to play against female-born athletes, saying that she “wouldn’t even place” if she competed in the male’s category.

The 29-year-old revealed on Thursday that she shared the same opinion as swimmer Emma McKeon, Australia’s most decorated Olympian, who declared on Tuesday that she “wouldn’t want to be racing against someone who is biologically a male.”

Seebohm, who won three Olympic gold medals and five world championship gold medals, noted that she wants to compete on the “same field” where “everyone has that same ability of strength, has that same ability of speed, has that same ability of power.”

In fact, a “level playing field” needs to be a priority, the 29-year-old argued, explaining that swimmers “want to be able to swim and the races be neck and neck because we are even.”

“We don’t want people winning by 10, eight seconds,” she added.

Speaking to Nine’s Today, Seebohm noted: “Of course, biological males are always going to be faster and stronger than I will ever be in my life.”

“If I was swimming in a male event I wouldn’t even place, I wouldn’t have got a medal in Tokyo, and a male who came eighth in Tokyo in the same event as me would have won the event by about five or six seconds, so there’s the difference we’re talking about.”

While everyone should be able to be involved in swimming, “we need to keep this sport as fair as possible,” she said.

Her comments come after Olympic swimmer McKeon admitted she “wouldn’t want to be racing against someone who is biologically a male.”

“The sport has to think about how to handle it and how to deal with it because you do want to be inclusive, but you don’t want to have females racing against swimmers who are biologically male because it’s just not fair,” she told Griffith University’s A Better Future For All forum on Tuesday.

Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, swims for the University of Pennsylvania at an Ivy League swim meet against Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 22, 2022. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images)
Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, swims for the University of Pennsylvania at an Ivy League swim meet against Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on January 22, 2022. Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP via Getty Images

While an increasing number of large sporting organisations inside and outside Australia have permitted trans-identified male-born athletes to compete in women’s categories, pushbacks against the move have also been growing.

On March 20, Australian Christian activist Martyn Iles denounced the championship of trans U.S. swimmer Lia Thomas in the women’s 500 metre category at the NCAA as “inglorious and shameful.” He put forward the idea that it should be condemned “no matter how hard the culture resists it.”
One day later, Virginia tech swimmer Reka Gyorgy released a statement accusing Thomas of taking her spot and arguing that for “every event that transgender athletes competed in” one spot was taken “away from biological females throughout the meet.”

With Australia’s federal election being one month away, the transgender debate is becoming a prominent election issue as both leaders from two major parties were pressed on the topic.

While Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted he would continue to back Liberal candidate Katherine Deves, a vocal critic of the transgender ideology, Labor Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has tried to pivot away from a question regarding his view on transgender people’s participation in women’s sports.

“That’s covered by the Sex Discrimination Act,” he said. According to section 42 of the Act, sporting organisations are allowed to exclude people from any competitive sporting activity on the basis of “sex, gender identity or intersex status in which the strength, stamina or physique of competitors was relevant.”

Later, Albanese added he believed “girls should be able to play sport against girls and boys should be able to play sport against boys.”
On Thursday, the Northern Territory government reversed its controversial gender diverse guidelines which would encourage schools not to separate students based on their gender in sports events, after being criticised for “attempting to apply Marxist ideology” into the education system.
Nina Nguyen
Author
Nina Nguyen is a reporter based in Sydney. She covers Australian news with a focus on social, cultural, and identity issues. She is fluent in Vietnamese. Contact her at [email protected].
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