Parkrun blasted for removing women’s records instead of ending gender self-ID

Parkrun will no longer publish course records on its website after being slammed for allowing men to self-identify as women.

The community group will still list the “self-declared gender” of each participant in weekly results, but it has already removed all records categorised by age and sex.

Although Chief Executive Officer Russ Jefferys claimed that removing the focus on competition was “not related to the transgender debate in any way”, former Olympian Sharron Davies MBE said Parkrun needs to return to “simple fair sport for all” based on “biological reality”.

‘Millions’

Writing in The Times, sportswriter Alyson Rudd said that even though Parkrun is not a competitive sport, losing to a man could “easily make you feel diminished, that your efforts were in vain, that sport is not a level playing field”.

She said: “This is the time for us to study, explain and embrace biological differences, not pretend they are irrelevant — even while running in the park.”

Women’s Rights Network’s Heather Binning highlighted that Parkrun receives “millions of pounds of public funds to increase participation of women and therefore the fact that their policies permit men to self-identify in this category is wrong on many levels”.

One woman took to social media after cancelling her regular donation, saying: “Donated since it started but I can’t bankroll an organisation that instead of correcting its poor gender policy, it hides the stats. What poor leadership”.

Grassroots sport

Last year, former Olympian Sharron Davies MBE accused second-rate male athletes of “self-identifying their way onto women’s podiums” and ruining grassroots sport.

In her foreword to a report by Policy Exchange on the toll trans ideology is taking on women’s sport, Davies urged policymakers in the UK to bar biological males from female amateur competitions.

Lottie Moore’s report, Levelling the Playing Field: Why Women and Girls Matter in Amateur Sport, details how gender self-ID policies are undermining “the integrity of women’s sport”, especially at grassroots level.