'Unfair Advantage:' Georgia Tech Athletes Disagree with Male-To-Female Transgenders Competing in Women's Sports

Student athletes at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) disagree with Lia Thomas, a biological man, competing in the NCAA women’s 500-yard freestyle race, telling Campus Reform that biological advantages make the competition an unfair playing field.

“I’m an athlete, I like sports. Seeing a guy participate in women’s sports obviously isn’t fair. I don’t like seeing it, obviously he’s dominated the scene for a while, and it’s just a little disappointing,” one student told Campus Reform reporter Alexa Schwerha, who traveled to Georgia Tech ahead of the NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming Championship.

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“As a Division I student-athlete, I would feel like there is an unfair advantage,” another student said. “I think if a transgender athlete wants to compete it should be in a certain division made for them.”

“That’s just unfair,” another said. “The [female swimmers] trained their whole lives for this, and this one dude just comes out of nowhere.”

“Just based off of the natural unfair advantage, it could be disheartening if I know I’m going into an event where there is someone who can beat me just by the fact that they have a different abilities from the get-go, not based off of training. That would be hard to handle,” another said.

Not all students, however, agreed. One student claimed that Thomas competing in women’s swimming is okay because, “Michael Phelps has enlarged lungs and that gave him an advantage in being able to become the swimmer that he became, and he got that biologically.”

“At the end of the day, she transitioned to become a woman and she is, just, now a woman and she gets the ability,” the student argued.

Thomas had competed on the men’s swimming team for three years at the University of Pennsylvania, before making the switch to the women’s team.

Last week, Thomas got in the water at the NCAA women’s 500-yard freestyle race and virtually lapped his female competitors as he cruised to an easy victory.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

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