{"id":499222,"date":"2022-03-10T18:04:41","date_gmt":"2022-03-11T01:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/?p=499222"},"modified":"2022-03-11T10:01:01","modified_gmt":"2022-03-11T17:01:01","slug":"erica-sullivan-shares-thoughts-on-lia-thomas-i-just-feel-bad-for-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/erica-sullivan-shares-thoughts-on-lia-thomas-i-just-feel-bad-for-her\/","title":{"rendered":"Erica Sullivan Shares Thoughts on Lia Thomas: &#8216;I Just Feel Bad For Her&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Erica Sullivan Shares Thoughts on Lia Thomas: &#8220;I Just Feel Bad For Her&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>At the women&#8217;s NCAA Championships next week in Atlanta, transgender woman <strong>Lia Thomas<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/ncaa-appears-to-give-lia-thomas-green-light-to-compete-at-championships\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">will be the top seed and favorite in the 200 and 500-yard freestyle races<\/a>. Few of her national competitors have weighed in on the controversy surrounding Thomas so far. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/brooke-forde-i-will-not-have-a-problem-racing-against-lia-thomas-at-ncaas\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The only significant statement came from Stanford fifth-year swimmer <strong>Brooke Forde<\/strong>, who said that she would not have a problem racing Thomas in the 500 free at NCAAs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Now, another key swimmer who will race against Thomas in the 500 free at NCAAs, Texas freshman <strong>Erica Sullivan<\/strong>, has shared an opinion.\u00a0Sullivan was a U.S. Olympian in 2021, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.swimmingworldmagazine.com\/news\/olympics-fittingly-katie-ledecky-powers-to-gold-in-inaugural-womens-1500-freestyle\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">she captured the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics in the 1500-meter free<\/a>. With her performances, Sullivan became the first openly-lesbian swimmer to qualify for a U.S. Olympic team and then to win an Olympic medal.<\/p>\n<p>Asked for her own opinion on whether Thomas should be allowed to race, Sullivan downplayed the competitive ramifications while lamenting the effects of the criticism Thomas has taken on her well-being.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think people are asking for this big, well thought-out explanation, especially for me as a gay swimmer, but my explanation is pretty simple. I don\u2019t care. It comes down to the fact that when I race, I don\u2019t race for the status or for the gold or for whatever. That\u2019s just not why I do it. I love winning, don\u2019t get me wrong. Getting a silver medal was so cool, and that\u2019s always exciting, but I swim for the people around me,&#8221; Sullivan said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I feel bad for Lia because imagine being on a team where you know some people don\u2019t want you there. That\u2019s just a terrible environment to be in. I feel like I\u2019m in an environment at Texas where I\u2019m accepted by everyone here. If they\u2019re not, they haven\u2019t verbalized it to me. They\u2019ve kept it to themselves, very supportive of my relationship, love it when I make my jokes. They\u2019re very supportive of who I am as a person, and I just feel bad that Lia doesn\u2019t have that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sullivan was in favor of new USA Swimming rules creating policies and procedures for transgender females to be eligible for elite-level competition, but she expressed concerns about the NCAA changing eligibility requirements for trans swimmers such as Thomas in the middle of the season. She admitted that she would be upset if Thomas beat her but no more upset than if she lost to any other competitor in the field at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncaa.com\/sports\/swimming-women\/d1\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NCAAs<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I\u2019m going to swim my 500 free to the best of my ability and try to beat her, not because she\u2019s trans but because I\u2019m competitive and I don\u2019t like losing,&#8221; Sullivan said. &#8220;If I lose, I\u2019m going to be (ticked), not because Lia\u2019s trans but because I\u2019m a competitive person, and I\u2019m going to go back home and train as hard as I can. I\u2019m going to be the same amount of angry if Emma beats me, <strong>Emma Nordin<\/strong> or <strong>Emma<\/strong> <strong>Weyant<\/strong>. Or Brooke Forde.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Sullivan expressed empathy for Thomas as she has received considerable criticism despite not breaking any rules. &#8220;She&#8217;s getting hate from all sides. All I can think for her right now is that sucks for her because that has got to mess you up at night. That\u2019s got to hurt as a human being,&#8221; Sullivan said. &#8220;I just feel bad for her. She doesn\u2019t deserve what she\u2019s getting.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Erica Sullivan Shares Thoughts on Lia Thomas: &#8220;I Just Feel Bad For Her&#8221; At the women&#8217;s NCAA Championships next week in Atlanta, transgender woman Lia Thomas will be the top<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":478906,"comment_status":"open","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":[3,6],"tags":[130127,52093,129951,51820],"class_list":["post-499222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-college","tag-2022-ncaa-college-swimming-championships-women-di","tag-erica-sullivan","tag-lia-thomas","tag-transgender"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - 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