ATLANTA – Five former elite-level college women swimmers Tuesday described losing to a transgender athlete in an unfair competition and the trauma they suffered sharing a locker room with Lia Thomas.
The five competed in the 2022 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships at Georgia Tech.
“Competing as a woman against Thomas was unfair,” Grace Countie, a 22-time All-American swimmer at the University of North Carolina and Olympic Trials semifinalist, told members of the Georgia Senate Special Committee on the Protection of Women’s Sports at its first meeting. “We have the right as women to have an equal playing field.”
Thomas, who posted respectable but not spectacular times while swimming for the University of Pennsylvania men’s team, emerged into the national spotlight while transitioning to female through hormone replacement therapy, winning an NCAA national championship at the women’s competition at Georgia Tech.
Amid widespread complaints about Thomas being allowed to compete as a woman, the General Assembly took up a bill during the 2022 legislative session to ban transgender athletes from participating on school sports teams that align with their gender identity rather than their gender at birth.
However, lawmakers stopped short of legislating such a ban and instead left the issue up to the Georgia High School Association’s executive committee, which approved a ban that spring.
“We ended up punting the matter to the Georgia High School Association,” said Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the Senate’s presiding officer, who formed the committee. “We have the opportunity to correct the misgivings of the past. We should take that opportunity.”
The women who testified Tuesday described spending years of hard work and training to get to an elite level in swimming, only to have their chances to win a championship thwarted by Thomas’ entry into their events.
“It was clear to observers that Thomas only qualified because of the physical advantages he enjoyed as a man,” said Kylee Alons, a two-time NCAA champion and Olympic finalist who swam for North Carolina State University. “(But) they simply looked the other way.”
Several of the witnesses said they were traumatized when Thomas was allowed to change in the women’s locker room. Alons said she resorted to changing in a storage closet.
“I never felt more violated and betrayed,” said Kaitlyn Wheeler of the University of Kentucky.
The women’s testimony got some pushback at the end of Tuesday’s hearing from Cait Smith, director for LGBTQI+ policy at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. She said the swimming championships at Georgia Tech were an isolated incident.
Following the 2022 championship, World Aquatics, the governing body for international water sports, banned transgender women who have been through male puberty from competing in women’s races. As a result, Thomas was unable to participate in qualifying trials for the recently concluded Summer Olympics in Paris.
“You’re focused on one student who won one championship two years ago,” Smith told the committee.
But the women who testified Tuesday urged senators to enact a policy protecting women’s sports, rather than leaving the issue up to the high school sports association.
“Sports are a place for everyone,” Wheeler said. “But we must maintain fairness and safety by competing in the gender you’re born with.”