After finishing behind transgender swimmer Lia Thomas at the NCAA championships, Emma Weyant, Erica Sullivan, and Brooke Forde were a long way from their previous highs atop the swimming world.
On July 24, 2021, the then-19-year-old Weyant, a swimmer at the University of Virginia, had just touched the wall at the Tokyo Aquatics Centre in the 400-meter individual medley with a time of 4:32.76, winning the silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics while finishing less than a second behind the host nation Japan’s Yui Ohashi, at an event that was postponed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly didn’t happen.
A few days after Weyant’s podium appearance, Erica Sullivan, a swimmer at the University of Texas, earned her own Olympic silver medal with a second-place finish in the 1,500-meter freestyle, a few seconds behind gold medalist and American swimming legend Katie Ledecky.
SWIMMER LIA THOMAS BECOMES FIRST TRANS ATHLETE TO WIN DIVISION I NATIONAL TITLE
And while Brooke Forde did not have the opportunity to compete in an individual event at the 2020 Olympics, the Stanford University swim team standout was a member of the U.S. 4×200 freestyle relay team that won a silver medal behind a world-record-setting Chinese team.
But besides representing the United States to the world at the Olympic Games and each winning a silver medal, Weyant, Sullivan, and Forde have now earned the distinction of being the three swimmers who would have topped the podium in the 500-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA Swimming championships Thursday if Thomas had not been competing.
Thomas, a biological male who swam as a male for three seasons at the University of Pennsylvania before transitioning and identifying as female, finished the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:33.24 to claim the women’s national collegiate title in the event ahead of Weyant, Sullivan, and Forde, who finished second, third, and fourth respectively.
Social media users took note of a viral photo of the event’s trophy presentation Thursday, where Weyant, Sullivan, and Forde posed together on the third place podium step, with Thomas alone at the edge of the frame.
The outcome of the race made Thomas the first transgender athlete to win a national collegiate title in any sport and highlighted how the transgender swimmer’s arrival on the women’s collegiate swimming scene has roiled with controversy a sport that normally only finds a national spotlight during the Olympics.
Thomas, in a profile by Sports Illustrated, expressed a desire to compete at the Olympic trials for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team for the 2024 Paris Olympics, and Thursday’s results are an indication that the controversial swimmer could have a real chance of achieving that goal if the sport’s governing body, USA Swimming, continues to allow the transgender swimmer to compete in the organization’s sanctioned meets.
Following USA Swimming’s establishment of new guidelines on transgender athletes in women’s sports in January, it remains an open question whether Thomas will be allowed to continue competing as a woman. The new standards came after the NCAA balked at implementing its own standards and instead said it would follow the standards set by each sport’s governing body.
The NCAA also declined to implement the new standards set by USA Swimming to Thomas right away, allowing the controversial swimmer to compete at the Ivy League championships last month and the national championships this week. The body also later announced that individual teams would be permitted to establish their own policies regarding transgender athletes.
For their part, despite posing for a photo alongside Weyant apart from Thomas, Sullivan and Forde have both previously made statements supportive of Thomas in the weeks leading up to the NCAA championships. Sullivan, who is openly gay, went as far as to say she felt sorry for Thomas and wouldn’t be any more upset if the transgender athlete defeated her.
“If I lose, I’m going to be (ticked), not because Lia’s trans but because I’m a competitive person, and I’m going to go back home and train as hard as I can,” Sullivan told Swimming World. “I’m going to be the same amount of angry if Emma beats me, Emma Nordin or Emma Weyant. Or Brooke Forde.”
Forde had also previously made a statement supportive of Thomas, saying, “Social change is always a slow and difficult process, and we rarely get it correct right away.”
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“Being among the first to lead such a social change requires an enormous amount of courage, and I admire Lia for her leadership that will undoubtedly benefit many trans athletes in the future,” Forde said.
The Stanford swimmer said Wednesday that the NCAA championships would be the final swim meet of her career and that she would be moving to Peru in the fall as a member of the Peace Corps.
