© Instagram Cynthia Monteleone / @fastover40Cynthia Monteleone
Cynthia Monteleone, 45, is one of the US' foremost Masters athletes and a world champion in the 400m, but yesterday revealed her own team told her not to complain about having to compete against trans competitors.
In an interview yesterday on the eve of National Girls and Women in Sports Day, the Hawaiian-based runner hit out against the 'grossly unfair' rules allowing trans athletes to compete alongside biological females and recounted how she felt facing a trans athlete during the 2018 World Championships in Malaga, Spain.
Monteleone still managed to beat transgender competitor, Yanelle Del Mar Zape of Colombia, but claimed Team USA officials later insisted: 'for your own safety you should probably keep your mouth shut,' before she could make a complaint.
'Words can't describe how I felt walking up to that starting line in Spain next to a biological male-bodied athlete,' the Hawaiian track star told Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenns) during a Facebook live stream on the Senator's page 'Unmuted with Marsha' yesterday.
'I don't believe in keeping quiet about something that is so grossly unfair. With the policies that have been given, they are excluding female athletes — biological females.'
The world champion's comments come amid the controversy surrounding University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas, who now faces a potential ban from the sport after she broke several women's national records - despite previously competing for three years as a man.
USA Swimming today updated their rules to say that competitors in women's events must have recorded low levels of testosterone for 36 months.
Thomas, 22, began transitioning from male to female in May 2019, and so would appear to have only 32 months.
Until today, the rules required a year of suppressing testosterone, which meant that Thomas was likely to dominate the NCAA championship in Atlanta in March.
Though Monteleone was ultimately victorious when she faced Zape in 2018, her daughter - who is also an impressive high-school track athlete - faced a transgender competitor with massive advantages.
Monteleone explained her daughter was forced to run against a trans athlete who with minimal training destroyed the rest of the competition.
'She had to line up for her very first race, after training all year, along a biological male,' who Monteleone said 'blew everybody away in the first 100 meters' despite having trained for only two weeks prior to the meet.
'She deserved to win. She put in the work. But she had no chance because of the biological advantage of this male-bodied athlete.'
Monteleone also contends that a fellow Team USA runner was beaten to a medal by Zape in April 2019 at a World Indoor Championship meet.
The debate over whether male-to-female transgender athletes should be allowed to compete unrestricted against biological females has proved extremely divisive.
Some have argued that transgender athletes who identify as female should be permitted to compete as women, contending that to exclude trans athletes from high-level competition is tantamount to transphobia.
Others however have pointed out that transgender male-to-female athletes, particularly those who experienced puberty as a male and lived several years as an adult before transitioning, have myriad physical advantages over biological female competitors which no amount of training and dedication could ever overcome.
Though some contest that transgender athletes can take exogenous hormones to reduce their testosterone to levels equal to biological females, a range of studies have found that trans competitors by and large permanently retain a great deal of their physical advantages.
One study, by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a Canadian think tank, argued 'there is neither a medical intervention nor a clever philosophical argument that can make it fair for trans women to compete in women's sport.
'For trans women who have successfully suppressed testosterone for 12 months, the extent of muscle/strength loss is only an approximately (and modest) -5% after 12 months,' the authors of the study wrote.
'Testosterone suppression does not remove the athletic advantage acquired under high testosterone conditions at puberty, while the male musculoskeletal advantage is retained.'
The view is echoed by Joanna Harper, who herself is a transgender competitive runner and medical physicist at Loughborough University in the UK.
'There's 'absolutely no question trans women will maintain strength advantages over cisgender women, or non-transgender women, even after testosterone suppression.
'That's based on my clinical experience, rather than published data, but I would say there's zero doubt in my mind,' she told WebMD.
Monteleone is now pushing for a review of the current regulations which allow student athletes to compete under the sex they identify as, following an executive order signed by President Biden on his very first day in office.
The Masters track star declared that the current administration is putting the 'nail in the coffin' of female sports, before going on to encourage biological female athletes to speak out against injustices.
'Have that courage and focus on what's at stake for the future,' she said. 'The bottom line is female-bodied athletes deserve their chance for accolades and awards and scholarships.'
In November, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) published its own guidelines for sports regarding transgender rules in sports, but dodged specifics.
Instead, it calls on each sport to implement its own guidelines on what constitutes an unfair advantage.
No athlete should be excluded from competing based on an 'unverified, alleged or perceived unfair competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status,' the International Olympic Committee said.
'Athletes should be allowed to compete but unfair advantage needs to be regulated.'
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