Canadian masters athletics ratifies first national record by a trans female.
In February 2022, at an indoor meet at Toronto’s York University, Tiffany Newell of Welland, Ont., ran 18:02.30 over 5,000m, breaking the Canadian W45-49 record by six seconds. That record was recently ratified by Canadian Masters Athletics (CMA), under the rules and regulations of World Masters Athletics (WMA); it’s the first time a Canadian record was set on the track by a trans woman.
Newell, a former soccer player and triathlete, began her transition in 2017, but did not begin competing until she completed her transition in 2020 and her testosterone levels matched World Athletics’ current transgender athlete’s policies (WMA follows the rules of the sport set by its worldwide governing body, World Athletics).
The World Athletics policy states that to be eligible for female competition, transgender athletes must follow three guidelines:
1) provide a written and signed declaration, in a form satisfactory to WA Medical Manager, confirming their gender identity is now female; however, athletes need not have sought or obtained legal recognition of their gender identity or changed the sex marker on official identification (i.e. passports or drivers license).
2) demonstrate to the satisfaction of WA officials “on the balance of probabilities” that the concentration of testosterone in their blood serum has been less than 5 mol/L continuously for a period of at least 12 months (WA’s average range for serum testosterone in males is 7.7-29.4 mol/L; the average for females is 0.2-1.68 mol/L).
3) transgender athletes must keep their serum testosterone concentration below 5 mol/L to maintain eligibility and compete in the female category.
Newell has had some success in her past two seasons. She won a silver medal at the 2021 Canadian XC Championships in the masters 8K and finished second at the 2022 Hamilton Marathon (2:55:57).
Athletics Ontario and Athletics Canada currently offer two gender choices on their annual membership application (male or female), and they do not check the selection unless there is a national record application involved. The member lines up and competes in the gender category that they select.
The inclusion of transgender athletes in sports became a public debate when U.S. collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas began to break NCAA records. Thomas competed on the University of Pennsylvania’s men’s swim team from 2017 to 2020 and the women’s swim team from 2021 to 2022. In March 2022, she became the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship in any sport, winning the women’s 500-yard freestyle event.
As a result of Thomas’ success, swimming’s world governing body World Aquatics (known as FINA), voted to restrict the participation of transgender athletes in elite women’s competitions and is working to establish an ‘open’ category in some events as part of its new policy.
World Athletics announced shortly after FINA’s decision that it would review its transgender eligibility policies after swimming passed new rules that restrict transgender participation in women’s events in June 2022.
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said to Insider that when it comes to transgender athletes, he believes in prioritizing fairness over inclusion. “If you pushed me and said I had to choose between fairness or inclusion, I will always lean towards fairness, because that’s what sports have to be based on.”
Newell thinks there are pros and cons to the open category: “The policy makes sense for non-binary athletes, but I don’t feel comfortable racing against men. It categorizes me in the sex I am not identified as. I am a woman, and I feel most comfortable racing against women or other transgender women. I believe an open category can work if athletes can continue to race against athletes of the same gender.”
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