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- Lia Thomas’ teammates spoke anonymously to documentary maker Matt Walsh
- They suggested that UPenn wanted to keep her in their team to win medals
- The team climbed seven places in the college leaderboards from 27th to 20th after Lia joined as a woman
- College sports teams enjoy lucrative sponsorships from companies – UPenn’s athletics division is sponsored in part by Coca Cola
- But the teammate said the team’s wins felt ‘tainted’ because of Lia’s advantage
- Doctors say there is no escaping the advantage she has having gone through puberty as a male
- Lia however thinks she should be able to compete as a girl because that is how she identifies
- She told Good Morning America on Tuesday that she wants to compete in the Olympics
Lia Thomas‘ teammates say UPenn protected the transgender swimmer so enthusiastically because she helped them win points over other schools – then warned them they’d be canceled if they spoke out.
In a new documentary about gender ideology that will air tomorrow night, the anonymous teammates said they were told never to question Lia’s place and warned that doing would seal their fate.
‘Penn actually brought in people high up in the athletic department to talk to us, like brought in someone from the LGBTQ center, they brought in someone from psychological services.
The message was ‘Lia’s swimming is a non-negotiable.’
‘They’ve made it pretty clear, if you speak up about it, your life will be over in some way, you’ll be blasted all over the internet as a “transphobe,” … you’ll never be able to get a job,’ one of the girls said.
‘Lia’s swimming is a non-negotiable,’ one swimmer says she was told by an unnamed college executive.
‘Having that be lifted is incredibly relieving and allows me to put my all into training and racing.’
She insisted that she did not transition to perform better in the league tables, explaining: ‘Trans people don’t transition for athletics. We transition to be happy and authentic and to be ourselves.
‘Transition to get an advantage is not something that factors into our decisions,’ she said.
She also said she was prepared to give up her swimming career in order to transition and wasn’t sure she would be allowed to compete as a woman.
When she started taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT), she said she immediately became slower in the water.
‘I’m not a medical expert but there’s a lot of variation among cis female athletes. There are cis women who are tall muscular and have more testosterone. Should that also disqualify them?’
Doctors say that Lia does have an unfair advantage that cannot be reversed because she went through puberty before she started taking hormones to become female.
While the hormones reduced her levels of testosterone, some experts say a year or even four years of the therapy is not enough to reverse what happens to the male teenage body.
‘There are social aspects to sport, but physiology and biology underpin it. Testosterone is the 800-pound gorilla,’ Michael J. Joyner, the Mayo Clinic doctor, said yesterday in an interview with The New York Times.
He added on Tuesday on Good Morning America: ‘Body size, hand size, foot size, bone density [are all factors] but the main thing is the interactions of exercise training and muscle.
‘I think that evidence so far would suggest a period of a year, two, three or even four years [of hormone therapy] is insufficient.’
Shrugging off the doctor’s comments, Lia says she hopes to compete in the Olympics.
‘It’s been a goal of mine to swim at Olympic trials for a very long time. I would love to see that through,’ she said.
Dr. Michael Joyner, left, and Dr. Ross Tucker, right, both say the biological advantage is inescapable
‘Lia Thomas is the manifestation of the scientific evidence. The reduction in testosterone did not remove her biological advantage,’ Dr. Ross Tucker, a sports physiologist added.
Their comments confirm the fears of Lia’s competitors, who were literally blown out of the water after she started transitioning from male to female when she was 19.
She has since soared to the top of the women’s league tables, whereas she was unheard of as a male athlete.
The swimmer’s teammates at Princeton have anonymously fought to have her excluded from the category.
They are too frightened to speak publicly about the issue for fear of being kicked off he team or lampooned by LGBTQ activism.
In a recent interview with Sports Illustrated, Lia defended her position saying: ‘I am a woman, just like anybody else on the team. I’ve always viewed myself as just a swimmer.
‘It’s what I’ve done for so long; it’s what I love. ‘I get into the water every day and do my best,’ she said.
In the Times article, one of the teammates revealed she had been rejected from a social eating club at Princeton because she had branded ‘transphobic’ for questioning Lia’s place in the sport.
Her place has divided the world of sport.
Some say she should be allowed to compete in the category she identifies with whereas others, including tennis legend Martina Navratilova – who is gay – say it’s unfair.
Navratilova was admonished for tweeting about Lia’s situation and suggesting that she should compete with an asterisk next to her name.
She told the Times: ‘I played against taller women, I played against stronger women, and I beat them all.
