A former Olympics cyclist has explained on GB News why more women are not speaking up about transgender athletes.
During a debate on the subject on GB News’ Dan Wootton Tonight, host Patrick Christys said: “I have been staggered by how many weak people are out there”, before adding “why isn’t every women against this?”.
Patrick Christys and Inga Thompson
GB News
Before Inga Thompson replied: “Every woman is against this but the cancel culture is real, they are cancelling athletes.
"They’re employees so they have people trying to keep their jobs and the cancel culture is very real.
“I was on the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association and I talked to the executive director and said I want to put this letter together to the IOC because it's coming up again about transgender athletes.
“They said ‘yea go ahead and sign this’ and I got the executive director’s, not only approval, but his signature.
Swimming’s world governing body FINA voted over the weekend to ban athletes who have gone through male puberty
Brett Davis
"And here comes that crowd and it was like full on going on every person I had posted on Facebook, anybody they could find they went after their jobs.
"They targeted all of these people so I understand why people don’t speak up.”
Her comments come after Swimming’s world governing body FINA voted over the weekend to ban athletes who have gone through male puberty from racing in women’s events.
In addition, FINA will set up a working group with a view to establishing an open competition category, open to athletes “without regard to their sex, their legal gender, or their gender identity”.
The sport’s new gender inclusion policy was passed by more than 70 per cent of member federations at an extraordinary congress during the ongoing World Championships in Budapest.
FINA president Husain Al-Musallam said: “We have to protect the rights of our athletes to compete, but we also have to protect competitive fairness at our events, especially the women’s category at FINA competitions.”