Swimming no shows – or is that no-floats?

We’ve talked ad nauseum about Lia Thomas, Pennsylvania’s swimming pride and joy – ‘she’ of the broad shoulders and for all I know a remaining daggerboard from his/her days as an unsuccessful male swimmer.

World Swimming, in light of all the adverse response to him/her/it, decided rather than to force the women to swim with the men or to ban the ‘funny’ men, took a third and more sensible route.

World Aquatics, formerly known as FINA, originally announced in July that the Berlin Swimming World Cup would be the first competition to have an “open category” for all swimmers. The event announcement followed backlash from LGBTQ activists to its “gender inclusion policy” established in 2022 that only permitted transwomen swimmers who began transitioning before age 12 to compete in women’s categories.

I’m good with that. Men compete against men, women against women, and let the confused folks fight it out for their trophy. Everyone should be happy like that, right? Except for one detail:

“Following the close of registration for the open category competitions at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup – the Berlin 2023 meet scheduled for October 6-8th – World Aquatics can confirm that no entries have been received for the open category events,” the organization said in a statement.  MSN

All you old farts – remember the Vietnam-era button/sticker that said “What if they gave a war and nobody came?”  Think we are seeing the aquatic equivalent. Hey, they made a new division for you ‘other’ folks, the least you can do is be grateful and enter. Think of it like this – at this point someone who could barely tread water could have won a medal.

Sidebar from Virginia – the Roanoke College women’s team, which took second in the Old Dominion Athletic Conference, was pumped to try for first this year – until the college mandated that one of the college’s biologically male
trans swimmers join their team.

The captains of the sophomore, junior, and senior squads — Kate Pearson, 19, Lily Mullens, 20, and Bailey Gallagher, 21 — say it tore the team apart as they felt abandoned by the school and the NCAA.

“I never expected to be blindsided by a teammate from the men’s team who now wanted to compete against me and my fellow swimmers and shatter our records,” Gallagher said, noting she was initially supportive of the trans swimmer’s transition.

“Why even try to swim when racing against a biological male?” Mullens asked. “Our defeat was written in biology.”

The captains stressed that they had no problem with the trans athlete as a person, but were simply worried about her competitive advantage and the possibility that other schools would refuse to compete against Roanoke.

When their coach did not help, it felt like “a betrayal” Pearson said, adding that team members burst into tears when they heard his response.

“We were told that even if our whole team stood against it and refused to compete, the swim coach would be able to compete with just that person on the team. They could just have a one-person team,” she said. NY Post

Nothing like standing by your team, huh… The article does note that the guy trans swimmer has since left the team.  I do, however, have a couple of predictions:

1) When they do start holding these “open” events and boyz-to-gurlz and gurlz-to-boyz meet… I strongly suspect very few of the latter will win anything.

2) From what I read, the overwhelming majority of the boyz-to-gurls folks claim they are lesbian.  The privileges of  being socially hip, still having the old traditional boy-girl fun. I doubt that will change.

Category: "Teh Stoopid", The Stupid is Strong