British Cycling’s decision to introduce a new ‘Open’ category, which will consolidate the existing men’s grouping and run alongside the female ctegory in competitive events, as part of the governing body’s update to its transgender and non-binary participation policies, is designed to place transgender women “at a major disadvantage”, according to one transgender cyclist and former racer.
However, former Olympic and world road race champion Nicole Cooke has voiced her support for British Cycling’s new policy and claimed that the “decision to protect female sport is the right one”.
Yesterday, the national governing body announced that – following a nine-month review of its transgender and non-binary policies, instigated after those policies were suspended last April in the wake of the furore surrounding the participation of transgender cyclist Emily Bridges at the British Omnium Championships – a new ‘Open’ category will be implemented alongside a female category for competitive events.
> British Cycling updates transgender policy, introduces new “Open” category
The current men’s category will be consolidated into this new grouping, for which transgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, and those whose sex was assigned male at birth will be eligible to compete.
The female category, meanwhile, will remain in place for “those whose sex was assigned female at birth and transgender men who are yet to begin hormone therapy”. These changes will only apply to competitive activity, and will not impact non-competitive programmes such as the governing body’s Breeze rides, a women-only community initiative which will continue to remain open and inclusive for transgender women and non-binary people.
However, one of the participants in those Breeze rides, Jackie Aspden, says she is “perplexed” and “disappointed” by the new policy – and that the changes have made it “very unlikely” that she will rejoin British Cycling.
> British Cycling’s transgender and non-binary participation policy: a cyclist’s experience
Aspden, a former racer and cycling retailer who detailed going through the transition process as a British Cycling member last year, told road.cc: “I have just read the proposal and am perplexed. I understand the worries of women athletes and accept the present situation there until better research into the effects of hormone treatment is done.
“However, the inclusion of men into the ‘open’ category is patently designed to make sure that transgender women will compete at a major disadvantage, especially if like myself their testosterone levels are virtually zero.
“In my case, my upper body strength has reduced to the extent that I cannot manage to throw darts effectively. I can ride on my road bike but average speeds are limited to around 11.5mph. Admittedly I am almost 79 years old and that has some effect, so I tend to limit rides to a maximum of 60 miles and need to maintain fuel levels to do so.
“I have fitted similar gearing to Roglič [for this week’s Giro mountain stages] to enable hill climbing. In mountain bike orienteering events I use an e-bike and my results don’t count towards leagues.
“I ride and lead rides with Lancaster Women’s Cycling Group as well as being an administrator. I stopped riding British Cycling social rides after a very uncomfortable event on the outskirts of Liverpool. That was the only time I have experienced transphobia.
“I’m very disappointed [in the policy updates] and certainly will be very unlikely to rejoin British Cycling.”
‘Can trans women who meet the UCI’s eligibility criteria compete in the female category for the GB Cycling Team ?….No. The new British Cycling Policy for Competitive Activity will apply to all selections for the GB Cycling Team’ … Sport’s trans shame exposed
— Philippa York (@pippa_york) May 27, 2023
That sentiment has been echoed by former professional cyclist Philippa York, who described the decision to exclude transgender women from Team GB selection, even if they meet the UCI’s current eligibility criteria, as “sport’s trans shame exposed”.
However, other ex-pros – such as Nicole Cooke – have praised the governing body’s decision.
“Pleased British Cycling have updated their policy on Transgender and Non-Binary participation,” the 2008 Olympic road race champion tweeted last night. “The decision to protect female sport is the right one and I applaud their stance. Hopefully the UCI will back this up.”
In a statement yesterday, British Cycling’s CEO Jon Dutton, said: “Our new policies are the product of a robust nine-month review process which we know will have a very real-world impact for our community both now and in the future. We understand that this will be particularly difficult for many of our trans and non-binary riders, and our commitment to them today is twofold.
“First, we will continue to assess our policy annually and more frequently as the medical science develops, and will continue to invite those impacted to be an integral part of those conversations.
“Second, we will also continue to ensure that our non-competitive activities provide a positive and welcoming environment, where everyone can feel like they belong and are respected in our community, and take action to eradicate discrimination from the sport.
“I am confident that we have developed policies that both safeguard the fairness of cycle sport competition, whilst ensuring all riders have opportunities to participate.”
15 thoughts on “British Cycling’s new ‘Open’ category “patently designed to make sure that transgender women will compete at a major disadvantage”, says “perplexed” transgender cyclist”
Cis women: we don’t want
Cis women: we don’t want trans women competing against us cos they have an advantage.
British Cycling: okay, we’ll make them compete against cis men in an ‘open’ category
Trans women: we can’t compete against cis men, they have an advantage.
British Cycling: tough. We can’t be arsed to change it again.
I’m glad I’m not a cyclist and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I support BC.
Other posters (other threads)
Other posters (other threads) have suggested possible different ways of changing the existing contest. In case BC flip-flops again what would you suggest they do?
I’m guessing “let all women race together, end of”- but I’m just interested if there’s any possibility of any other kind of change being acceptable? Even as a stop-gap on the way to “how it should be”?
There just aren’t enough
There just aren’t enough trans women racing to justify putting on separate races for them, though maybe it might change in a sort of ‘if you build it they will come’ fashion.
One possible stopgap would be to allow them to race in a lower ability category against cis-men. As an example, the British Masters Cycle Racing organisation (for the over 40s) – which categorises races by age in 5 year bands – allows women to race against men in an older age group. Someone who is currently racing as a 1st category (‘cat’) woman could enter 2nd cat male races, or even 3rds. If they’re good enough they’ll score enough points to move up the rankings, though admittedly it’s highly unlikely they’d ever be competitive at Elite level
Or even race in the women’s
Or even race in the women’s races in a separate category with seperate points and medals. Perhaps in return BC could sponsor and also ask all members of the category to participate in a 3 year monitoring research program that will collect data showing just how much or little advantage trans women have.
yes, sounds much more
Secret_squirrel, that sounds much more sympathetic. I think to expect a trans women to race in an ‘open’ category that in practice will predominantly be cis male would just be asking her to accept an utterly humiliating situation, after all she would be associated with an identity she will have intentionally left at significant personal cost. In practice she would simply have nowhere to race.
So are you for or against
So are you for or against inclusion of people into categories into which a subset have an innate sex-based performance benefit then?
Addendum: To be clear, you are arguing that it is unfair to make people of group B compete with those in group A, because A have a distinct advantage over B. On that basis, you argue that B should compete with people of group C. Yet, B have a distinct advantage over C.
By your own logic, surely that means C should not have to be made to compete with B?
And to be clear, groups A and B are competing with the innate hormonal system they developed with. Group B are in this “piggy in the middle” situation of being (wrt performance due to hormones) A > B > C because of their psychology (or medical condition or whatever is the correct way to class it – forgive me if I don’t have it right) and medical treatment choices they made a result.
If I am in Group A, and I am approaching or past 50, and my doctor advises me to take testosterone treatment for medical reasons, should I still be allowed to compete?
If BC are happy to tinker
If BC are happy to tinker with race categories, as demonstrated, then they could have created an Open category alongside Women and Men, that anyone could compete in.
Better still, change the Women to Female, as defined by chromosomal testing, and Men to Male, also as defined. Racers are already tested for other things, adding karyotype testing isn’t a big deal. And if you ain’t XX or XY, or refuse to be tested, you race in the Open.
And I look forward to future revelations that this rider or that racer is really XXY, or XYY, or XXX, or some other hybrid. Even some of you reading this may not be the sex you think you are. How about that?
MissyChrissy wrote:
The open category is open to all. If you’re arguing for a trans specific category, no one would be against that, if there was demand. Also, no objection from me – and likely most anyone else – to recognise best trans finisher in the open category.
There’s no need for this. 99.99%+ of people know fine well what their biological sex is – we can just ask them.
This is a tiny tiny tiny number, and as someone explained to you in the comments of another story, even amongst those with (very) rare chromosonal inter-sex conditions the majority of those are still physiologically consistent with the sex they present as.
This isn’t the killer argument you think it is.
Examples of people not being the sex they were racing as would be Castor Semenya. Had a development disorder causing her family to treat her as female from early on (if not birth), but is actually (physiologically) a man. There were probably a handful of other cases like this, at olympic level sport in the last century.
Note: You avoided answering any of my questions above directly.
All we hear about is the poor
All we hear about is the poor wee trans folk being discriminated against.
How about articles on how females feel about it?
Ah yes we can’t. BTL would be full of cries of terfs and transphobes and everyone has to cowtow to the Stonewall brigade.
If you read the article there
If you read the article there is comment from women athletes supporting this change.
Unfortunately I don’t believe athletes should have a say, their role is to beat the opposition so they are always likely to seek to exclude anyone they perceive has an advantage.
I have said many times that I don’t have the answer, but I do think that the experience of Philippa York has more relevance to the issue than Nicole Cooke (of whom I am a great admirer for her cycling ability AND her advocacy for women’s equality in sport). The problem is that often mainstream media and culture warriors find it easy to recruit marginalised groups to fight each other rather than joining forces to defeat the real enemy which is narrow minded bigotry.
I always remember hearing Tom Robinson talking about founding Rock Against Racism in the 70s. As a guy man he knew what discrimination was like, but chose to campaign on behalf of another marginalised group as well as his own. He is also on record about his frustration at the ever fracturing LGBTQIA+ alphabet, which he sees as weakening the voice against discrimination as a whole.
For clarity I am not accusing you of taking a discriminatory position.
I for one am happy to suggest
I for one am happy to suggest dubwises’ language makes me strongly suspect they are discrimination adjacent.
If British Cycling are
If British Cycling are unwilling to follow the UCI’s rules here (which, while not perfect, are much better than this absolute nonsense which will likely completely exclude most trans people from competing), then they should do the right thing and withdraw from the ECU and UCI.
Would it be too simple to say
Would it be too simple to say the categories are based on sex, not on gender?
“the inclusion of men into
“the inclusion of men into the ‘open’ category is patently designed to make sure that transgender women will compete at a major disadvantage,”
If she is arguing that as a result this is unfair, then by this very same argument it would be unfair to allow transgender women to compete against women.
The science is that transgender women /on hormone treatment/ lose _some_ but (crucially) *not all* of their performance advantages over women, as a population.
‘British Cycling’s new ‘Open’
‘British Cycling’s new ‘Open’ category “patently designed to make sure that transgender women will compete at a major disadvantage”, says “perplexed” transgender cyclist’
As opposed to being allowed to compete at a major advantage against real women.
Well done British Cycling. Common sense prevails at last.