Former swimmer Sharron Davies tells BBC female athletes must be protectedpublished at 13:49 British Summer Time 16 April
Sheelagh McClaren
BBC Scotland
In our earlier post, we touched on what today’s ruling could mean for transgender people in sport, and now we’ve heard from Sharron Davies – a former British swimming champion who has previously said trans athletes should not compete in female competitions in order to “protect women’s sport”.
She says she’s “extremely pleased” by today’s judgement. “I think it’s just really important that we can define what a woman is,” Davies tells me.
Today’s ruling did not concern sports directly, but Davies says she hopes organisations including the Football Association and the English Cricket Board will now take notice and “stop discriminating against women and girls”.
“It doesn’t mean to say that we can’t respect people across the whole of society, however they wish to present themselves”, she says. “My position was always one that, biologically, women are very different from men”, Davies goes on, saying it’s time for sports to “protect every female athlete”.
For context: In recent years, many sports have tightened up rules around transgender athletes at the elite level. Athletics, cycling and aquatics, for example, have banned transgender women from taking part in women’s events.
Other sports have instead put in place eligibility criteria. Earlier this month the English Football Association introduced stricter rules, but still allowed transgender women to continue to compete in the women’s game as long as their testosterone was kept below a certain level.
In 2022, British Triathlon became the first British sporting body to establish an open category in which transgender athletes can compete.
