Boston — Lia Thomas, the transgender College of Pennsylvania swimmer competing on the ladies’s staff after competing on the boys’s staff in years previous, and Iszac Henig, the transgender Yale swimmer, capped off dominant particular person performances on the Ivy League Championships on Saturday.
Thomas and Henig each competed within the 100-yard freestyle, Thomas after amassing wins within the 500- and 200-yard freestyles earlier within the week, setting pool information in each in addition to a meet report within the latter. Thomas prevailed within the 100-yard freestyle finals with a time of 47.63 seconds — a pool and meet report — whereas Henig got here in second with a time of 47.82 seconds.
On Saturday morning, Thomas completed second within the preliminary heats for the occasion, behind solely Henig, who’s transitioning from feminine to male and has undergone surgical, however not hormonal, remedies to assist that transition. Henig additionally took first place within the 50-yard freestyle on Thursday.
Henig and Thomas have additionally each been integral contributors to their groups’ relay races on the Championships.
Within the 1650-yard freestyle, which Thomas didn’t compete in regardless of having regularly accomplished so all through this season, UPenn’s Catherine Buroker completed in first place with a time of 16 minutes and 21.17 seconds. Thomas accomplished the identical occasion in quarter-hour and 59.71 seconds in December. Buroker completed second within the 500-yard freestyle, over six seconds behind Thomas.
The participation of Thomas has been particularly controversial given the bodily benefits that critics argue the swimmer boasts from having gone via male puberty. Thomas’s eligibility to compete within the Ivy League and NCAA Championships was briefly doubtful after the NCAA and U.S. Swimming each not too long ago introduced a rule change that may require transgender opponents in girls’s occasions to spend three years on testosterone suppressants earlier than competing.
Finally, although, the NCAA determined that implementing the rule change earlier than the tip of the present season “may have unfair and doubtlessly detrimental impacts on colleges and student-athletes meaning to compete in 2022 NCAA girls’s swimming championships.”
Each Thomas and Henig have been main boons to their groups all through this season and on the Ivy League Championships. Going into Saturday night, that they had helped Yale and Penn transfer into second and third place respectively, behind solely Harvard.
Regardless of Thomas’s contributions to Penn’s success, some on the staff have raised considerations. In a letter written to Penn and the Ivy League, 16 of Thomas’s teammates anonymously urged the college and the convention to not problem the brand new NCAA rule. The letter additionally careworn the group’s help for Thomas’s transition.
“Biologically, Lia holds an unfair benefit over competitors within the girls’s class, as evidenced by her rankings which have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a feminine,” reads the letter, which fits on to claim that the athletes have been informed that they “can be faraway from the staff” and “by no means get a job supply,” in the event that they gave voice to that opinion.
A separate assertion — provided by “a number of” nameless teammates, in line with the college — took a opposite view, expressing “full help for Lia in her transition.”
“We worth [Thomas] as an individual, teammate, and good friend. The emotions put ahead by an nameless member of our staff usually are not consultant of the emotions, values, and opinions of your complete Penn staff, composed of 39 girls with various backgrounds,” continued the nameless assertion, which one dad or mum informed the Washington Submit was probably submitted on behalf of two or three members of the staff.
The NCAA Ladies’s Swimming and Diving Championships are being hosted by Georgia Tech in Atlanta from March 16–19.
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