{"id":492858,"date":"2021-12-07T17:38:49","date_gmt":"2021-12-08T00:38:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=492858"},"modified":"2021-12-11T07:16:23","modified_gmt":"2021-12-11T14:16:23","slug":"lia-thomas-transgender-swimmer-from-penn-swims-fastest-times-in-nation-controversy-brewing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/lia-thomas-transgender-swimmer-from-penn-swims-fastest-times-in-nation-controversy-brewing\/","title":{"rendered":"Lia Thomas, Transgender Swimmer from Penn, Swims Fastest Times in Nation; Controversy Raging"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Lia Thomas, Transgender Swimmer from Penn, Swims Fastest Times in Nation; Controversy Brewing<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At this weekend&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/vmrw8k5h.tinifycdn.com\/results\/pdf\/2021-zippy-invitational-ncaa-college-2021-12-03.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Zippy Invitational<\/a>, Penn&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Lia Thomas<\/strong> won three events and swam the fastest time in the country in two of those races, but her swims are causing a stir because of Thomas&#8217; status as a transgender athlete. Thomas competed for three years on the Penn men&#8217;s team, but she did not compete in 2020-21 as the Ivy League canceled its athletics for the entire season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This year, Thomas became a member of the women&#8217;s team for the first time.<\/p>\n<p>According to the <a href=\"https:\/\/ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com\/inclusion\/lgbtq\/INC_TransgenderHandbook.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NCAA Policy for Transgender Student-Athlete Participation<\/a>, Thomas would only be allowed to compete as part of a women&#8217;s team &#8220;until completing one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment.&#8221; Presumably, that occurred during the 2020-21 school year in order for the NCAA to rule her eligible for this season.<\/p>\n<p>While she is swimming slower than her lifetime bests from her time on the men&#8217;s swim team, she has already achieved &#8220;A&#8221; cuts for the NCAA Championships. In fact, Thomas has already swum times in two events faster than the winning times at last year&#8217;s NCAAs. In Akron, Thomas swam a times of 4:34.06 in the 500 free (seven tenths ahead of Arizona State&#8217;s <strong>Emma Nordin<\/strong> as the country&#8217;s top swimmer), 1:41.93 in the 200 free (six tenths clear of Stanford&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>Torri Huske\u00a0<\/strong>for the No. 1 spot) and 15:59.71 in the 1650 free (sixth in the country).<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this season, at Penn&#8217;s dual meet against Columbia in early November, she won the 200 free by more than five seconds in 1:46.92, and she also won the 100 free in 50.35. Later on, she swam dual meet times of 1:43.47 in the 200 free and 4:35.06 in the 500 free, crushing the school records on both occasions. At the Akron midseason meet, she destroyed her competition in both events and also the Akron pool records in the event. And Thomas is even rising in the all-time rankings: her 200 free performance makes her the 17th-fastest performer in history, and she is less than three seconds off <strong>Missy Franklin&#8217;s<\/strong> American record. In the 500 free, she ranks 21st all-time.<\/p>\n<p>Unsurprisingly, Thomas&#8217; impressive performances <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2021\/12\/07\/upenn-transgender-swimmer-lia-thomas-continues-dominant-season-with-more-record-breaking-wins\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">have raised controversy<\/a>, particularly on social media, from those who believe that Thomas&#8217; sex at birth should disqualify her from competing in female sporting events, despite the NCAA&#8217;s rules on athletes who are transitioning. The key question is whether rules designed to allow transgender athletes to participate in college athletics ensure a level playing field and are fair to cisgender female athletes.<\/p>\n<p>In an article published in <i>Penn Today <\/i>over the summer, Thomas admitted that she was unsure about what her swimming career might look like after coming out as transgender, but she said that she has found relief in the pool.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The process of coming out as being trans and continuing to swim was a lot of uncertainty and unknown around an area that\u2019s usually really solid,&#8221; she said, according to<em><a href=\"https:\/\/penntoday.upenn.edu\/news\/game-pieces-culture-wars\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> Penn Today<\/a>.<\/em> Realizing I was trans threw that into question. Was I going to keep swimming? What did that look like?<\/p>\n<p>Thomas is not the first collegiate swimmer to come out as transgender and make the switch between programs at their respective schools, but she is the first swimmer to approach championship-level swimming after undergoing a gender transition. Previously,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/schuyler-bailar-to-be-first-openly-transgender-collegiate-swimmer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Schuyler Bailar<\/strong> competed for the Harvard men&#8217;s team after being recruited as a female and later transitioning<\/a>, and more recently, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/meet-natalie-fahey-southern-illinois-first-transgender-swimmer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Southern Illinois&#8217;\u00a0<strong>Natalie Fahey<\/strong><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/meet-natalie-fahey-southern-illinois-first-transgender-swimmer\/\"> attempted to compete for the women&#8217;s team after transitioning<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Rules in various sporting organizations provide trans male athletes an easier opportunity to compete for men&#8217;s programs than for trans females attempting to compete on a women&#8217;s team. Trans males are not required to undergo hormone therapy before competing for a men&#8217;s program since there is a consensus that being born a female leaves athletes with physical disadvantages to cisgender males. There is less of a fairness issue at play here. The main controversy regarding transgender athletes comes with allowing those who have transitioned male-to-female to compete in female events, where many believe that hormone treatments do not neutralize the inherent advantages that come with being born male.<\/p>\n<p>Many sports governing bodies, including USA Swimming, have struggled to determine how best to allow trans males the opportunity to compete. While USA Swimming has made a conscious and much-needed effort to prioritize inclusion in recent years, trans female participation remains a controversial issue with many strong opinions on all sides and little consensus about what is justified.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s worth noting that Thomas, from her time on the men&#8217;s team, was a six-time finalist at the Ivy League Championships, including three runnerup performances at the 2019 meet. Her times were 4:18.72 in the 500 free, 8:55.75 in the 1000 free and 14:54.76 in the 1650 free. Following hormone therapy, her 2021 times are far slower but still fast enough to be championship quality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lia Thomas, Transgender Swimmer from Penn, Swims Fastest Times in Nation; Controversy Brewing At this weekend&#8217;s Zippy Invitational, Penn&#8217;s\u00a0Lia Thomas won three events and swam the fastest time in the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":492869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,122077,6],"tags":[129951],"class_list":["post-492858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-americas","category-college","tag-lia-thomas"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\r\n<title>Lia Thomas, Transgender Swimmer from Penn, Swims Top Times in Nation<\/title>\r\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lia Thomas, now competing for the Penn women&#039;s team after previously swimming for the men&#039;s team, could threaten Katie Ledecky records.\" \/>\r\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\r\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/lia-thomas-transgender-swimmer-from-penn-swims-fastest-times-in-nation-controversy-brewing\/\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\r\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lia Thomas, Transgender Swimmer from Penn, Swims Fastest Times in Nation; 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