Explained: What is FINA’s new ruling on transgender swimmers-Sports News , Firstpost

Representational image. Unsplash@jon_chng

FINA announced a landmark judgement in which it effectively banned transgender swimmers from participating in women’s competitions.

The global swimming body made the announcement in a congress in Budapest, Hungary on Monday. The decision came following weeks of deliberations on the topic which stemmed from US transgender swimmer Lia Thomas dominating women’s collegiate events.

FINA, the global organising body for swimming and diving in additition to other aquatic sports such as water polo, additionally created when they call an ‘open category’ for transgender swimmers to compete in.

“I do not want any athlete to be told they cannot compete at the highest level. I understand why transgender athletes want to compete in the gender of their choice…but we should not favour one athlete over another.”

“We will be the first international federation to start this work,” FINA president Husain Al-Musallam was quoted as saying in his address at the Budapest congress.

But what exactly is the “open category” that FINA is talking about and why did the organisation arrive at this decision? Let’s start with some background on the topic

Lia Thomas

University of Pennsylvania’s Thomas created history earlier this year when she became the first transgender athlete to win an elite US collegiate title after edging Olympic medley silver medallist Emma Weyant in the NCAA Championship 500-metre freestyle in March.

Thomas, who was part of the UPenn’s men’s team between 2017 and 2019 and began her transition in May 2019, has since been at the centre of the controversy surrounding fairness of competition in women’s events as well as on the rights of transgender athletes to play the sport at the highest levels.

Reactions varied from USA Swimming creating a new set of guidelines that it claimed relied on “science and medical evidence-based methods to provide a level-playing field for elite cisgender women” to sixteen of her teammates urging US college sport authorities to bar her from competing in future women’s events.

What is FINA’s verdict on the matter?

In its ruling on Monday, FINA stressed on the fact that male-to-female transgender swimmers can compete in women’s events only if they haven’t experienced any part of male puberty, adding that said athletes should have completed their transition before the age of 12 to be eligible for women’s events.

“This is not saying that people are encouraged to transition by the age of 12. It’s what the scientists are saying, that if you transition after the start of puberty, you have an advantage, which is unfair,” Al-Musallam’s spokesperson James Pearce was quoted as saying according to The Associated Press.

Pearce added that there are currently no transgender women participating in elite competitions.

What exactly is the “open category” that FINA mentioned in its address?

While excluding transgender women from elite women’s competitions, FINA maintained that the said athletes could now compete in a new category, i.e. the “open category”.

However, FINA is yet to chalk out the exact details of this new category as well as other specifications such as qualification process and event calendar, etc.

“No one quite knows how this is going to work. And we need to include a lot of different people, including transgender athletes, to work out how it would work.

“So there are no details of how that would work. The open category is something that will start being discussed tomorrow,” Pearce added.

With inputs from agencies

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