Transgender cyclist Austin Killips has responded to Donald Trump and accused the president of using fear around the idea of trans athletes “invading women’s sports” to “fixate hate and attention” on them, while “doing nothing at all to elevate, fund or support women athletes”.

The comments come in an opinion piece published by the Guardian, Killips calling the article her “response” to Trump having “singled me out” as “someone ruining women’s sport”. 

Killips’ victory at the UCI 2.2 Tour of the Gila in 2023, as well as wins in cyclocross and ultra-endurance races, sparked much debate and scrutiny from politicians, the press and wider public. Her situation has been comparable to that of Emily Bridges in the UK, both trans cyclists subject to vast media attention and comments from politicians who have questioned their right to race in women’s events.

> Emily Bridges accuses Rishi Sunak of “normalising violence against trans people”, as she prepares for British Cycling legal challenge

In July 2023, two months on from Killips becoming the first trans cyclist to win a UCI women’s stage race, the sport’s governing body banned transgender female cyclists who have transitioned after puberty from competing in international women’s races.

Killips has continued to compete in gravel events and other endurance races and was this month mentioned by Trump as the newly inaugurated president announced his Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports executive order. Trump said Killips is “a male cyclist posing as a woman” who “competed in the 800-mile Arizona Trail Race – a very big deal in cycling – and obliterated the women’s course record by nearly five and a half hours”.

Pointing out that she took the record from a male athlete, Alex Schultz, Killips went on to explain in the Guardian piece how Schultz himself had previously beaten female ultra-distance legend Lael Wilcox’s record, the event’s “co-ed leaderboard” what “spurred” her interest in the event in the first place.

“Not that it got me anywhere, financially,” Killips wrote. “It failed to secure me anything meaningful like industry sponsorships – tangible support that would have made my pursuits in sport tenable. Instead, my wins only served to generate more artifacts for the right’s culture wars, while I remained unable to garner even a sliver of the institutional recognition that friends and fellow competitors with similar palmares have found.

“Transgender people lost the inclusion battle in sport ages ago. International governing bodies for competitions in running, cycling, chess, swimming, darts and more have repeatedly caved to pressure and helped shift the Overton window to exclude trans people from public life more broadly. The world’s least gracious winners insist on kicking sand in our eyes.

“Trump’s executive order is a perfect scam: he and his acolytes get to talk endlessly about the fake spectre of trans athletes ‘invading’ women’s sports, while never putting any of their attention, immense political cache and funding access towards things that would meaningfully elevate the state of women’s sports. Instead, they get to fixate their hate and attention on every transsexual woman who dares show up to a rec T-ball league with her friends. Meanwhile, the women who simply want to compete and labour as athletes are left in the cold.”

Killips says conditions for female cyclists looking for a team or a race “are the worst they have been in the last decade”.

She continued: “Consider this: when you watch a professional race, it’s common for an announcer to regale spectators with the resumes of the women on the start line. Many of them are record-shattering athletes and also hold full-time jobs as doctors, researchers or investment bankers. These remarks always come in good faith, but as a means of contrasting us against the men – who usually have enough money and support thrown behind them to make a living as athletes – they speak to the sad state of affairs in women’s sport.

“And soon, things for women’s sports will get even worse. Because it bears repeating, as clearly as possible: their project contains no measures that help female athletes at the professional level as labourers, and certainly nothing that even gestures towards new investment opportunities for girls pursuing their dream. It’s a free market that devalues women’s labour at every turn.

“In fact, the only action items referencing funding simply establishes a precedent for rescinding money from organisations investing in women and girls who have given their lives and bodies to sport. In this new reality, all women lose. In fact, everyone loses – except for the people cashing checks and amassing political power.

“They found a scapegoat, and all they have done is enrich themselves with five-figure speaking fee tours, while taking the oxygen out of the room. The only lane they’ve made is one that encourages women to quit competing for a life of news appearances and college campus speaking tours. They are, for lack of a better word, cowards who don’t want to do the actual work of empowering and supporting athletes.

“So my argument is quite simple. Maybe you take umbrage with trans people in sports, and in turn me (whatever, you won that battle). But if you purport to care about women’s sports, about girls getting a fair chance at competing, you need to ask yourself why, at the height of a historic moment of sweeping and unchecked austerity measures, the loudest and wealthiest people in the room have built a movement that culminated in this: an executive order that establishes a precedent to strip funding away from women in sport.”

Prior to the UCI’s ban on transgender female cyclists who have transitioned after puberty from competing in international women’s races, Killips raced numerous high-profile events, including finishing ninth in the United States’ national championships road race in 2023 and competing in several rounds of the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup in Europe.

Following her win at the Tour of the Gila, the UCI said it would make an “eventual decision” on its transgender policy and “take into account all elements” of heated debate. That decision banning transgender female cyclists who have transitioned after puberty from women’s races came in July.

A couple of months earlier, British Cycling updated its transgender policy and introduced a new “Open” category to run alongside the women’s category and which transgender women would be required to compete in.

> British Cycling’s transgender and non-binary participation policy: a cyclist’s experience

Transgender cyclist Emily Bridges claimed the announcement amounted to trans women being “banned” and called British Cycling a “failed organisation” which “takes money from petrochemical companies and engages in culture wars”.