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Live blog: Transgender track world champion receives criticism and abuse online, Frank Vandenbroucke’s daughter joins Lotto-Soudal + more
All the news from the site and beyond as we start a new week
Mon, Oct 15, 2018 14:13
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Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
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Latest Comments
Blackthorne83 3 hours ago
Hey, but their wool blend cycling adjacent t-shirts are/were fantastic.
RoadYeti 4 hours ago
@Surreyrider Still the boss. Ride one, you'll see why
chrisonabike 8 hours ago
@Smoggysteve "Most would happily ride on the roads and be treated with respect by drivers". But people aren't - and as far as I can see they won't be. Not until there is a lot less driving and it's slower around cyclists, and far more people driving have "skin in the game" eg. they sometimes cycle and their friends and family do also. That's what leads to the model - which is perhaps most advanced in NL - where cycling, walking and driving are all seen as separate normal transport modes. Their needs, vulnerabilities and any dangers to others are considered. And *that* leads to "mix / share when possible, separate when necessary". But "possible" is "where your 10-year old would be safe to cycle unsupervised" - so very few motor vehicles, going slow! And AFAICS everybody - even "existing cyclists" - is happy with the result. (I dunno about a few pro cyclists - but don't they tend to have training camps in different counties anyway?)
chrisonabike 8 hours ago
@quiff as an Edinburgh resident I can confidently say he's speaking without moving his lips in one sense: - while as I noted in a separate comment there *is* now some real separated cycle infra, all the examples i can think of have *at least as much space* for pedestrians. The rest of the "cycle infra" is essentially similar to the situation in the rest of the UK: eg. bus lanes*, cycle lanes and shared use paths (eg. "build" infra by sticking up a sign). Edinburgh is one of the places with a moderately extensive network of former railways which have been converted to "shared use" paths (completely motor traffic few). However though shared they are not narrow by UK standards. And this is all effectively a "free extra" for all non- motorised users, not like the "sign a cycle path" where pedestrians do lose space. I think this all comes from the "popular understanding" of cycling in which ultimately cyclists are the "other". They don't fit "motor vehicle" or "pedestrian" (including wheelchairs on the very rare occasions people think about that). Thus "cyclists are cheating" in multiple ways! They shouldn't get their own space as "there aren't enough" of them. And "they can just use the road / path". But being able to *choose* "on the road" or "on the footway" (shared use path) is clearly unfair - nobody else gets to do that! BUT of course even if they did pick just one of road OR pedestrian space it's still not fair anyway because they're "too slow" for the road (don't pay "road tax" etc...) and "far too fast" for pedestrians... * Though some existing cyclists may appreciate them when there are few buses, buses and bikes are a very poor mix for several reasons.
mikecassie 8 hours ago
Whilst a shame for any employees, their bib shorts had the worst chamois pad I’d ever encountered, utter waste of my money. Even though they were Strava challenge discount purchases, still a waste of money.
ktache 9 hours ago
Thanks, just going to have to suck it up. Got next week off and will take the easy, if expensive option...
Rendel Harris 9 hours ago
@ktache Just go for the TNT Sports only package, £30.99 for a month. Alternatively have you considered experimenting with a VPN for a few pounds, allowing you to sign up for a free stream abroad, e.g. SBS Australia which streams the Tour live? If I didn't have a kind mate's login that's what I'd do!
ktache 10 hours ago
So, it's now the month of July and I'm going to have to pay to watch the TdF, for one month only. On a tablet unfortunately, as I didn't manage to get a laptop to rig up to the TV, grrr. Just wondering, what package will I have to fork out for? Not wanting to pay for the wrong one...
Rendel Harris 11 hours ago
Not that it sounds like a dealbreaker given the other faults you've identified, but that cable isn't really a "proprietary" cable, four pin magnetic cables like that are quite common on bone-conducting headphones and other devices (my inexpensive smartwatch uses one) and they can be had for £4.99 on UK Amazon.
22 thoughts on “Live blog: Transgender track world champion receives criticism and abuse online, Frank Vandenbroucke’s daughter joins Lotto-Soudal + more”
Wow, perhaps I shouldn’t be
Wow, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, but jeeze there’s some horrible abuse of that transgender athlete on twitter.
I am sympathetic to transgender athletes, my limited knowldge of such things informs me that there are strict hormone levels restrictions (inc testosterone) far lower than ‘normal’ people which have a huge effect on the body which fly in the face of becoming an elite athlete.
I’m not qualified to know whether the playing field is level or not, but I am sympathetic, it is complex and must be tough on the individuals to find their place.
It’s a minefield, and one
It’s a minefield, and one only surely a very small number of people are qualified to comment on, with authority (one being the athlete herself, it seems).
This is something that the governing bodies need to be clear on, because ‘the public’ (incl me) need it to be as black/white as it can be. They’re way behind the game and athletes themselves are being used as test cases. The Caster Semanya case has been an ugly mess.
davel wrote:
Unfortunately being a man / woman is not black and white, even in the ‘natural’ state. No-one can make it thus, regardless of how great your need might be.
Still a massive advantage to
Still a massive advantage to grow up a man, with a man’s frame and underlying muscularity, regardless of where hormone levels end up.
Needs a separate class imo, they people aren’t women when it comes to competing against other biological women. If this is what it’s going to come to then you may as well just let the women dope. Surely there’s only so long natural women athletes can put up with this sort of thing? You dedicate you life to something then Bradley Wiggins decides he’s a woman and wipes the floor with everyone. Not fair really.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
I can get my head round, say, Justin Gatlin. Trains harder, longer, lifts more, all on steroids. Stops taking the steroids, passes tests, but he keeps the gains he puts down under steroids.
I’m inclined to agree with your assumptions, but it’s way more complicated than what I can get my head around. Needs the governing bodies to step up. That doesn’t often happen.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
OTOH my wife’s cousin’s wife is a cis female. She’s six foot three, weighs more than me and is way stronger (I’d bet). Just sayin’.
brooksby wrote:
Snu snu?
brooksby wrote:
A 6ft 3 athletic man will be way stronger. On average a man is 40% stronger in upper body strength and 33% stronger in lower body. Take this sort of figure into trans territory and you can see where things will go wrong in sport. Take a man that did steroids and then transitioned and you’ve got even more wrong.
The most ludicrous case was the fighter Fallon Fox. Fighting natural women and breaking eye sockets.
Yorkshire wallet wrote:
I saw an expert (biology/sports biology – just had a quick Google and can’t find the comments I’m after – will have more of a look: BBC I think) talking about Semanya, and basically saying Man/Woman definitions in elite sport don’t work. His argument was that our whole categorisation was around the male physical ideal, with what we expected as ‘women’ not really being consistent with many female elite athletes.
He suggested we have either ‘Elite Men’ thresholds (eg certain testosterone level) and ‘Everyone else’ , with the understanding that some women would fall into the Men category, and loads of men falling into ‘Everyone else’.
Or, have ‘Elite Men’ and ‘Women’ categories, where the women would have to face lower thresholds that loads of elite women would fail now. The third category would be the middle ground between the two – ‘Everyone else’. He acknowledged that neither approach would be acceptable, but said the current approach doesn’t work.
davel wrote:
Probably Ross Tucker. He has some interesting talks on his youtube channel (not a lot of new content lately unfortunately). His web site The Science of Sport is good reading too if you’re interested in sports science. This might be the article you’re referring to:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/45167582_The_Science_of_Sex_Verification_and_Athletic_Performance
Agree with coments made
Agree with coments made earlier. Create a sepearate class; atheletes shouldn’t be taking drugs to suppress or enhance their performance and audiences shouldn’t be having to work out what’s considered physiologically fair.
There’s quite a lot of
There’s quite a lot of evidence to suggest that using anabolic steroids for a prolonged period leads to lasting changes in skeletal muscle morphology.
If someone spends a prolonged period as a male with ‘normal’ male levels of testosterone then transitions to a female you would expect something similar to occur.
Athletes who have spent prolonged periods of their lives with male levels of testosterone will therefore have a lasting advantage against athletes who have spent their entire lives with female levels of testosterone.
For that reason I don’t think it is fair for athletes who have spent large periods of time with high levels of testosterone to compete against those who haven’t.
Paper detailing the difference in muscle morphology:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4160183/
Agree with Rich_cb, there
Agree with Rich_cb, there will always be people who are closer to the opposite sex biologically and in recent times Caster Semenya by definition of undescended testes is as close to the middle as any athlete at the top. She was however born this way, she had no say whatsoever in how she turned out biologically and with no penis, on the outside to the average joe she was/is a women. Semenya may well have had the advantage of having circa three times the testosterone levels of an average women up until the IAAF decided she needed to take drugs to reduce that so as to compete as a woman but this wasn’t her fault or choice to make. There was a lot of sour grapes by athletes competing against her and even now there is still lots of complaints/mutterings despite the drugs to surpress the hormones.
However it’s different for those competing in transgender sport, it’s their decision to compete against people who were born female and haven’t had that early years advantage of male hormones, but the rules allow it.
It’s pretty clear to me at least that many of the Eastern European ladies competing in the strength events in athletics and weighlifting BITD were likely to be identified and being closer to the biological dividing line chosen to take drugs and compete. There were cases of kids as young as 8 being given steroids to get them to the top by the time they were 21. The likes of Jarmilla Kratochvilova and Heidi Kreiger are prime examples, Kreiger changed her sex in the lates 90s and you would have no way of knowing she was a women before. You then have Florence griffith Joyner who was a very attractive woman and a good athlete, however she underwent a rapid change in her mid 20s, not just muscularity gains but also her jawline changed, adams apple became prominant, her voice totally changed and the other classic signs of heavy testosterone use such as enlarged clitoris, hairy top lip. The Chinese went through a massive steroid programme in the 90s and their women destroyed the 3000 to 10,000m records as well as swimming, just as the East Germans had in the 70/80s and into the 90s.
I also have a lot of suspicion of British athletes, Alan Wells was accused by his fellow Scot Drew McMaster to having taken steroids that changed him from a scrawny long jumper to a pumped 100/200m champion. I also think certain lady field event athletes in those days were ‘on it’, maybe not as much as the Eastern Europeans but it’s always interesting when you see big gains much later in ones career. I asked the same question of Alf Engers who came back after a year away from any competition and a 3 hour sleep after a bakery shift at the age of 38 managed to smash the UK 25 time trial record.
Someone suggested that they need seperate classes within transgender sport, I’m glad it’s not me having to worry about that but something has to be done to make it a fairer system, as I said, they made a decision to change sex, those like Semenya did not choose to be born close to being a male.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
The MOST RECENT 100-800m female track record was set 30 years ago. Something dodgy was going on, and it wasn’t just the shellsuits.
“Hands up if you believe I got these thighs through vitB12 and power laps”
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, fella! You’re havin’ a laff?!? Naming Alf in amongst that lot?Broke the 25 record when he was 19. Banned from amatuer sport for the next ten years for taking some sponsorship funding. Came back at 28 and dominated short distance testing in the 70s regaining the record at the height of his powers. Come on…
JohnnyRemo wrote:
So you don’t think it’s even a tiny bit suspicious that a 38 year old beats not just his but the national record by well over a minute after a massive lay off and a knee tied together with liquorice strands, come on.
BehindTheBikesheds wrote:
No.
My bad it was 5 years he was banned for, then totally dominated short distance time trialing for the next decade – 6 times 25TT champ. King Alf – Total legend.
http://www.classiclightweights.co.uk/riders/engers-riders.html
I think, more interesting
I think, more interesting than our comments, would be to hear what 2nd and 3rd place think.
efail wrote:
Given the viciousness and bigotry that the transgender lobby normally deploys in the face of even the slightest criticism, they are probably keeping their mouths shut.
efail wrote:
I agree BUT in the current climate anything other than a fully suportive view from either will lead to their villification by a very vocal self interest group so no point. The governing body should step in BUT same reasons as above they will not. My View? I take the view that it is not possible to have a level palying field where people have not grown up sharing the same gender its rather like doping. If that offends sorry but at least its an honest opinion.
The data suggests that when
The data suggests that when you change your hormones from male- to female-typical, you change your performance similarly. On transgender forums the rule of thumb is if you were an x-percentile male, you’ll be an x-percentile female. If you could finish at 20 from 100 starters before transition, that’s what you’ll be afterwards. My own experience is entirely consistent with this.
You muscles are weaker without testosterone. It’s harder to build muscle, easier to lose it, and the opposite with fat. And those big male bones are just ballast without the muscle to move them.
I don’t think there is a need for a separate class- the problem is disappearingly small. Do you think that think any athlete who is not trans would do that to their body and mind, just to win the women’s class in a race. Seriously?
Fascinating and informative
Fascinating and informative discussion on ‘Woman’s Hour’s this morning (Tuesday) on the whole subject. Worth a listen if you can find it. By the way, until recently I thought LGBT(?) was a type of sandwich.