American transgender swimmer Lia Thomas won the women’s 500-yard (about 457 meters) freestyle race on Thursday at the Ivy League, a competition involving several prestigious American universities, despite critics who have called for her to be banned from competition .
The 22-year-old swimmer had been cleared to compete in the prestigious Ivy League Championships, and finished her race in first place with a time of 4:37.32/100, a record for the Blodgett Pool in the United States. Harvard University.
Thomas dominated women’s swimming from her university as a student-athlete at Penn State, where only a few years ago she was competing in swimming as a man. His case has divided opinionwith some believing she has an unfair physiological advantage, while others believe she should be allowed to compete freely as a woman.
This month, the governing body of swimming in the United States, USA Swimming, unveiled new guidelines that provide a stricter threshold for athletes’ testosterone levels – which is widely believed to make more difficult the participation of Thomas in important competitions.
A few weeks ago, she had been challenged within her university club. Some of his co-athletes had signed a letter denouncing the supposed advantages linked to his morphology as a boy and asking for the tightening of the rules concerning transgender athletes.
Another transgender swimmer, Iszac Henig (a female transitioning to male), also competed Thursday and won first place in the women’s 50-yard freestyle race.