A man has been dominating women’s Ivy League swimming this year, including the championships held this weekend at Harvard.
Controversial transgender swimmer Lia Thomas won the “women’s” 500 freestyle with a time of 4:37.32. It was the fastest time ever recorded at Harvard’s Blodgett Pool for a women’s sporting event. The woman with the best time in the event was Catherine Buroker, also from the University of Pennsylvania. She finished seven seconds behind Thomas, who, until recently, competed in men’s swimming at Penn.
Recently, both the NCAA and USA Swimming announced changes to their policies regarding transgender athletes competing in sports. If the Ivy League followed these guidelines, Thomas probably would not have been able to compete in these championships. An actual woman would have won the championship in women’s swimming. Yet the Ivy League was insistent on allowing a male athlete to dominate the female athletes for whom the competition was created.
“It’s a big ‘screw you’ to women,” a Penn swimmer previously told me, on the condition of anonymity, when discussing Thomas’s situation vis-a-vis the team.
It is a sad state of affairs when the Ivy League not only allows but also celebrates a man beating women in female collegiate athletics. With its misguided sense of reality, the Ivy League feels it is doing the right thing, not at all caring how many female athletes suffer for it. All that matters is this warped and twisted adherence to transgender ideology.
“Women are now third-class citizens,” an anonymous Penn swimmer told me in an interview conducted before the championships. “The Left care more about transgender people than they do about women.”
What other conclusion can one legitimately draw from all of this transgender cultlike fanaticism? Consider the available evidence of just this particular case involving Thomas. As previously mentioned, Thomas finished a whopping seven seconds ahead of the next closest swimmer in the 500-meter freestyle — teammate Buroker.
During Penn’s 2021-22 women’s swimming season, the best time for the 50 free was 22.78 seconds, set by Thomas. Thomas’s performance was the third-fastest time for the university’s women’s team in the last 13 seasons.
In comparison, Thomas’s record time for women would have been the 17th-best time for a man just this year.
Further analysis in other events shows that trained-and-in-practice male swimmers are faster than trained-and-practiced female swimmers in general, especially in longer-distance events. For example, in the 1,650-yard freestyle, this year’s top time was 15:59.71, by Thomas. The next fastest came in 38 seconds behind at 16:37.44. Thomas’s time in this event was the fastest by a Penn woman swimmer in at least the 14 years for which the school website keeps records.
Moreover, USA Swimming cited the biological advantage men have over women when the organization announced its changes to policies regarding transgender athletes.
Statistical data revealed that the top-ranked female in 2021, on average, would be ranked 536th across all short-course (25 yards) male events in the country. Additionally, the top-ranked female in 2021 would have placed 326th across all long-course (50 meters) male events in the country among USA Swimming members, the governing body said.
“I’m positive that no one thinks this is OK — or at least anyone with a brain, anyone with an education. Anyone knows there are differences between men and women,” the first Penn swimmer added.
And just imagine the agony Buroker must be enduring at this point. The real woman who won the event will be remembered as the second-place finisher behind a man in a women’s swimsuit. It is sheer madness. It is not right. How could anyone legitimately support this nonsense?
