Two men compete for the women’s pool final

The final of a women’s Ultimate Pool tournament was contested by two men.

Harriet Haynes and Lucy Smith, who are both male but identify as female, competed in the Event 2 final of the Ultimate Pool Women’s Pro Series held at Robin Park Leisure Centre in Wigan. Protests were held at the event decrying it for unfairness and erasure of women.

Haynes previously told the BBC that there is “nothing to fear”, saying: “Trans women are not a threat to pool. We’re not coming over in droves”.

Women silenced

Lynne Pinches, a pool player who forfeited a women’s 2023 tournament in protest at playing against Haynes, told TalkTV: “Whenever you play a transgender player, even if you win, it doesn’t make any difference because, in your heart, you know it’s unfair.”

She said this is a “category advantage”, explaining: “I watch some of the shots they play, and I think females don’t play these shots down the rails like this and they don’t clear up like this.”

Pinches stated: “Women have been silenced because of fear of being transphobic. That is why people don’t speak out about this subject. It’s not a gender issue. This is a fairness issue.”

Backlash

Broadcaster Piers Morgan called the event “preposterous”, while former Olympic swimmer Sharron Davies said it was “ridiculous and grossly wrong in every way”.

Protesters inside the venue held up banners saying, “Save women’s sport” and called out, “we stand with Lynne Pinches”.

Author of ‘The Illustrated Principles of Pool and Billiards’, Dave Alciatore, wrote about biological differences in the sport: “Men generally have more strength and faster-twitch muscles that make it easier to execute many shots – especially power shots like the break and power draw – with greater accuracy, control and consistency.”

Last man standing

Oliver Brown, Chief Sports Writer for The Daily Telegraph, wrote: “This is a category issue: sports are organised by sex to reflect the fact that, in physiology, men and women are immutably different, with profound implications for fairness.

“The travesty of Harriet Haynes and Lucy Smith facing off for a female title despite both being born male sends a stark signal: that if you continue to enable this erosion of fairness in the name of inclusion, the last people standing in women’s sport will be men.”

He stated: “each woman at that pool tournament was feeling the painful cost of her spineless administrators sacrificing her right to fair sport on the altar of gender ideology”.