A columnist for The Daily Telegraph says transgender athletes are “killing women’s sports”, after a man living as a woman broke a cycling world record.
Rachel McKinnon, who was born male, won the Women’s Sprint 35-39-year-old age category at the Masters Track Cycling World Championships for the second year in a row.
Writing in her column, Celia Walden said society has now reached “peak gender insanity”.
‘Sacrificed’
British cycling champion Victoria Hood revealed that some other riders “sacrificed” their opportunity to race at the event because “they don’t want to compete” against McKinnon.
“The science is there. The science is clear – it tells us that trans women have an advantage”, she continued.
“The world record has just been beaten today by somebody born male, who now identifies as female, and the gap between them and the next born female competitor was quite a lot.
She added that the gap between McKinnon and the next competitor was equivalent to 15m of the track, when sprint events are usually won by centimetres.
’Not fair’
Hood called on the International Olympic Committee to base regulations “on the science”.
She said: “If people want to push this through some misguided idea that they are being inclusive, it is not inclusive. It is excluding women and girls from their own category. It’s not fair”.
“The IOC need to make fair policies that are based on the science that we have, because if they can’t then they are not fit for purpose.
“They are washing their hands of it and it is becoming more political than it is about science and biology.”
Unequal
In August, former British Olympic gold-medallist Mary Peters hit out at pressure to allow men who claim to be female to compete against women.
Lady Peters, who triumphed in the women’s pentathlon in 1972, said men who identify as female cannot “compete on equal terms” with women.
She said: “If a man becomes a woman they still have that testosterone in their body and it is not an equal playing field”.