USA Swimming announces new policy for elite transgender athletes
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Loading... - Joshua Campbell
- 03 Feb 2022
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The national governing body for competitive swimming in the United States released a new policy Tuesday for transgender female athletes, and it faced swift criticism from some advocates.
USA Swimming, which has more than 400,000 members who compete on club teams all the way up to the Olympic team, released the Athlete Inclusion, Competitive Equity and Eligibility Policy, which is effective immediately.
It lays out two requirements for trans women who are members of USA Swimming: The concentration of testosterone in their blood must be less than 5 nanomoles per liter continuously for at least 36 months before they apply to compete, and they must provide evidence that going through puberty as their sex assigned at birth “does not give the athlete a competitive advantage over the athlete’s cisgender female competitors.”
A panel of three independent medical experts will be charged with reviewing applicants and implementing the policy.
In a news release Tuesday, USA Swimming cited statistical data comparing male and female cisgender athletes, who identify with their sex assigned at birth, that shows that the top-ranked woman in 2021, on average, would be ranked much lower in male events across short and long swimming distances.
The update comes a few weeks after the NCAA, which oversees collegiate athletics, announced it would scrap its previous trans athlete policy and instead adopt a sport-by-sport approach, similar to that of the International Olympic Committee. Under this guidance, athletes will look to the trans athlete policy developed by their sport’s national or international governing body. For swimming, those organizations are USA Swimming and FINA, the international governing body.
The timing of the NCAA announcement — in the middle of a season — surprised many advocates and athletes, with some arguing the organization “caved” to pressure from critics of Lia Thomas, a trans University of Pennsylvania swimmer who swam the fastest times in the nation this season in the 200-yard freestyle and 500-yard freestyle and qualified for the NCAA championships.
USA Swimming said in a letter to its members Tuesday that it released the new policy due to the NCAA’s announcement and after “a reevaluation of FINA’s expected policy timeline,” The Washington Post reported.
It’s unclear how the new policy will affect Thomas, who is not a member of USA Swimming. A spokesperson for the organization said in an email that NCAA events are not included in the policy's list of elite events.
A spokesperson for the NCAA said in an email that, consistent with the group's policy, "the Committee on Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sport will review this change at its next meeting and will make recommendations as it deems appropriate to the NCAA Board of Governors."
Until then, the policy adopted Jan. 19, which defers to USA Swimming and FINA and requires athletes to document their testosterone levels four weeks ahead of championship selection, remains in effect. The policy says an athlete's testosterone level has to fall below the "maximum allowable level for the sport," which under USA Swimming's policy would be 5 nanomoles per liter.
Some advocates and experts criticized the new policy.
No other national or international sport governing body has required more than 24 months of hormone therapy (or low testosterone) for trans female athletes, said Joanna Harper, a trans runner and a visiting fellow for transgender athletic performance at England’s Loughborough University who published the first performance analysis of transgender athletes in 2015. Read More…
