If You Can Beat Them, Join Them: US Athlete Who Ran As A Man Now Wins As A Woman
29th May 2019
Here is LetsRun.com staggering story about a runner who ran collegiate track as a male for three years and has just won a NCAA women's title
- Transgender woman CeCe Telfer, who was born and raised as Craig Telfer and competed on the Franklin Pierce University men’s track and field team during her first three years of college, won the women’s 400-meter hurdles national title at the 2019 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships
- Now she’s the national champion in the event simply because she switched her gender (Telfer’s coach told us that even though she competed on the men’s team her first three years, her gender fluidity was present from her freshman year)
- The fact that Telfer can change her gender and immediately become a national champion is proof positive as to why women’s sports needs protection
NEW YORK, United States - Over Memorial Day weekend, everyone who cares about the future of women’s sport saw their worst fears become a reality.
Transgender woman CeCe Telfer, who was born and raised as Craig Telfer and competed on the Franklin Pierce University men’s track and field team during her first three years of college, won the women’s 400-meter hurdles national title at the 2019 NCAA Division II Outdoor Track & Field Championships.
Telfer dominated the competition, winning in 57.53 as second place was way back in 59.21.
Prior to joining the women’s team this season, Telfer was a mediocre DII athlete who never came close to making it to nationals in the men’s category.
In 2016 and 2017, Telfer ranked 200th and 390th, respectively, among DII men in the 400 hurdles (Telfer didn’t run outdoor track in 2018 as either a man or woman).
Now she’s the national champion in the event simply because she switched her gender (Telfer’s coach told us that even though she competed on the men’s team her first three years, her gender fluidity was present from her freshman year).
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The fact that Telfer can change her gender and immediately become a national champion is proof positive as to why women’s sports needs protection.
Telfer ran slightly faster in the 400 hurdles competing as a man (57.34) than as a woman (57.53), even though the men’s hurdles are six inches taller than the women’s hurdles.
Yet when Telfer ran 57.34 as a man, she didn’t even score at her conference meet — she was just 10th at the Northeast-10 Outdoor Track and Field Championships in 2016. Now she’s the national champion.
Ostensibly, the NCAA has a policy in place to protect cisgender women athletes and prevent male-to-female transgender athletes from dominating the women’s category.
The NCAA transgender handbook states that an MTF transgender athlete must take “one calendar year of testosterone suppression treatment” in order to compete in the women’s category, but the vagueness of that statement is remarkable.
There is no mention of a minimum testosterone level that must be achieved or a minimum level of medication that must be taken, nor how those levels are to be monitored.
Contrast that to the International Olympic Committee, which requires that an MTF transgender athlete “must demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10nmol/L for at least 12 months prior to her first competition.”
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We reached out to the NCAA to ask for specifics on their transgender policy, and whether it is actually enforced with testing. They referred us to the the transgender handbook mentioned above and said we could expect a more detailed response on Wednesday.
Medical physicist Joanna Harper, who has served as an adviser to the IOC on transgender issues and has made the transition from male to female herself, said the NCAA doesn’t have a set limit for testosterone for trans women, nor does she believe there is consistent verification of T levels.
“The NCAA has not set a maximum T level for trans women, and I don’t believe that they do any independent verification of hormone levels,” said Harper.
The theory goes that if one greatly reduces their testosterone, their performances in sport should decline significantly. Harper told me one would expect roughly a 10% decrease in performance for flat events (she wasn’t sure it would be the great in the hurdles due to the difference in hurdle heights).
Yet Telfer is actually running faster in a few flat events as a woman as compared to what she ran as a man. Her 60-meter personal best as a man was 7.67. As a woman, it’s 7.63. Her flat 400-meter pb was 55.77 as a man and it’s 54.41 as a woman.
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Story by Robert Johnson/LetsRun.com
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