DAN WOOTTON: If the world allows trans swimmer Lia Thomas to compete, then women’s sport is finished

This weekend the world finally woke up and realised politically correct monsters who don’t give a damn about anything other than advancing a hard left ideology are perilously close to wiping out women’s sport for good.

The incongruous image of University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas – the first transgender athlete to win the NCAA title in the women’s 500-yard freestyle – towering over the biologically female runner-up while being booed by the Atlanta crowd sums up the total madness of our times.

Especially given second place went to Virginia‘s Emma Weyant – a silver medallist at the recent Tokyo Olympics, who still finished 1.75 seconds behind Lia.

Lia Thomas – the first transgender athlete to win the NCAA title in the women’s 500-yard freestyle – towered over her competitors as she was booed by the Atlanta crowd

The 22-year-old has gone from 554th in the event as a man to first as a woman.

While I don’t blame Lia personally because the NCAA’s dangerous rules allowing transgender athletes to compete after just a year of hormone therapy are obviously there to be exploited, there must now be a reckoning where the entire world of female sport unites before it’s too late.

As far as I’m concerned there’s a very simple solution to this quagmire: Trans athletes need to be told in no uncertain terms they cannot compete outside their biological sex.

All sportswomen make huge sacrifices to their way of life, after all. Going forward, anyone in the same position as Lia must accept their transition needs to be delayed until AFTER their competitive sporting career, with rules ensuring all athletes must compete in their biological sex at birth, regardless of the sport or the competition.

That may seem cruel, but it’s not too dissimilar to many top female athletes who make the heart-rending decision to delay becoming a mum for a few years before they retire (although I concede some are able to make a comeback after giving birth).

Am I being unfair?

Well, I knew I had to ask Caitlyn Jenner, the world’s most famous trans woman who won an Olympic gold medal while competing as Bruce.

She told me recently: ‘I think to be honest with you they’ve got to change the rules. We need a fair playing field. And right now, if we allow this, it’s not a fair playing field.’

Predictably and farcically, the left-wing media have tried to brand Caitlyn as transphobic, which is a real head spinner given her own transition.

But Caitlyn rightly sees the Lia Thomas debacle increasing the acrimony towards the trans community.

Caitlyn Jenner rightly sees the Lia Thomas debacle increasing the acrimony towards the trans community

‘I am firmly behind protecting women’s sports. We cannot have biological boys competing against women. It’s bad for the trans community,’ she answered honestly.

And she went even further than me by personally criticising Lia – who she said ‘was on the men’s team’ only a few years ago and is now ‘beating the women by two laps’ – for being irresponsible for continuing to compete, despite the controversy.

Caitlyn explained: ‘When you do transition and you do go through this, you have to take responsibility and you have to have integrity. I don’t know why she’s doing this. I respect her right 100 per cent to live her life authentically but I don’t think she’s being responsible with this.’

I’ll admit it is somewhat suspicious that athletes like Thomas and the New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard make the decision to transition and bid to compete in female events AFTER it has become obvious they will not be successful in men’s competitions.

Hubbard, at 43, was the first openly transgender athlete to compete at the Olympics last summer, having failed to make an impact while competing as a male for many years in junior competitions.

Lia, meanwhile, competed for three years on UPenn men’s swim team as Will before transitioning in 2019, but was not even in the NCAA top 500.

And, without any doubt, Lia has massive physical advantages because of her biology.

As the British swimmer Sharron Davies – a staunch advocate for female sport – wrote in The Mail on Sunday: ‘Lia has been taking testosterone-suppression medication for the required last 12 months, as stipulated in the NCAA rules, but no amount of it can reverse the physical benefits of male puberty.

‘She has greater upper-body strength and significantly more muscle mass than a woman of the same weight and height. She has a greater lung capacity, better VO2 uptake, different bone density, she is nearly 6ft 4in tall and has large hands and feet that act like paddles.’

The problem is that speaking up for female athletes now sees you immediately branded transphobic

The liberal media don’t want to properly cover the story, with NBC’s Today show even accused of airbrushing an on-screen image of Lia to make her look more feminine.

But when you dig a little deeper into Lia’s time on the UPenn team the case becomes ever more disturbing.

In January, one of her teammates told Shawn Cohen of DailyMail.com that they feel ‘awkward’ sharing a locker room with her because ‘Lia still has male body parts and is still attracted to women’.

Lia’s teammate added: ‘Multiple swimmers have raised it, multiple different times. But we were basically told that we could not ostracize Lia by not having her in the locker room and that there’s nothing we can do about it, that we basically have to roll over and accept it, or we cannot use our own locker room.’

Hungarian-born swimmer Reka Gyorgy who was bumped out of the finals by Lia has now written a furious letter to the NCAA decrying the decision

Then there’s the Hungarian-born swimmer Reka Gyorgy who was bumped out of the finals by Lia and has now written a furious letter to the NCAA decrying the decision.

‘This is my last college meet ever and I feel frustrated. It feels like that final spot was taken away from me because of the NCAA’s decision to let someone who is not a biological female compete,’ she wrote.

The letter continued: ‘Every event that transgender athletes competed in was one spot away from biological females throughout the meet. I ask that the NCAA takes time to think about all the other biological women in swimming, try to think how they would feel if they would be in our shoes. Make the right changes for our sport and for a better future in swimming.’

You’d have to be willingly blind not to feel Reka’s visceral pain and frustration.

And I say all of this as a huge admirer of women’s sport and female athletes.

As one of the official supporters of the London Pulse netball club, I know how much harder women must work to be at their physical peak week in week out, having to overcome issues with their menstrual cycle that do not impact biological males.

USA Swimming’s new policy is that athletes must record low levels of testosterone for 36 months to compete in the female category, a stronger regulation than the woke NCAA’s requirements.

They said in a statement recently: ‘USA Swimming firmly believes in inclusivity and the opportunity for all athletes to experience the sport of swimming in a manner consistent with their gender identity and expression. We also strongly believe in competitive equity, and, like many, are doing our best to learn and educate ourselves on the appropriate balance in this space.’

But that statement sums up the whole issue – in competitive women’s sport there simply isn’t room to be inclusive when it comes to allowing biological males to compete, no matter how much that offends the woke mob.

With the International Olympic Committee refusing to adopt a hardline policy on trans athletes, there needs to be a popular uprising before we risk female athletes becoming forever marginalised and women’s sport morphing into competition for sub-par biological males.

Even though she’s not breaking any rules, Lia Thomas is already taking us down that slippery slope.