World Athletics President Sebastian Coe is speaking out about the transgender athlete debate, following the NCAA victory of Lia Thomas. Thomas, a transgender swimmer at Penn, won the 500-yard freestyle at the NCAA Women’s Division I Championships last week in Atlanta.
Coe told The Guardian that the “integrity and future of women’s sport” is at stake as the debate continues, calling on the International Olympic Committee to introduce regulations that can be applied standard across every sport and insisted that “gender cannot trump biology.”
“I think that the integrity of women’s sport – if we don’t get this right – and actually the future of women’s sport, is very fragile,” Sebastian Coe told The Guardian.
Thomas formerly competed as a member of Penn’s men’s squad for three years, before transitioning to a woman during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the beginning of the 2021-22 season, Thomas started to compete for the Penn women’s team, having met the NCAA’s transgender-participation condition of one year of hormone-suppressant therapy. That requirement, which was based on outdated science, has since been changed. The NCAA initially indicated it would follow USA Swimming guidelines for transgender inclusion, but when the governing body for the sport in the United States announced stringent parameters, the NCAA changed its mind again.
According to the report, World Athletics has introduced strict rules for transgender athletes involving testosterone levels.
“There is no question to me that testosterone is the key determinant in performance,” Sebastian Coe told the Daily Telegraph. “If you look at the nature of 12– or 13-year-old girls, I remember my daughters would regularly outrun male counterparts in their class, but as soon as puberty kicks in that gap opens and it remains. He added: “Gender cannot trump biology. As a federation president, I do not have that luxury. It is a luxury that other organizations not at the practical end of having to deal with these issues have. But as far as I am concerned, the scientific evidence, the peer-reviewed work we have done, those regulations are the right approach.”