2023 WORLD AQUATICS SWIMMING WORLD CUP – BERLIN
- October 6-8, 2023
- Berlin, Germany
- LCM (50 meters)
- Meet Central
- Full Entry List
The recently-released entry lists for the opening Berlin stop of the 2023 Swimming World Cup series featured many big names, including World Record holders, Olympic gold medalists, and World Champions.
What it did not include, however, was any entries into the newly-created ‘open category,’ designed by World Aquatics to address a global fervor surrounding transgender athletes in sports.
World Aquatics committed to holding races in at least the 50 and 100 meter distances of all four strokes, with more races to be added if necessary.
“Following the close of registration for the Open Category competitions at the World Aquatics Swimming World Cup – Berlin 2023 meet scheduled for 6-8 October, World Aquatics can confirm that no entries have been received for the Open Category events,” AQUA said in a statement. “The World Aquatics Open Category Working Group will continue its work and engagement with the aquatics community on Open Category events.”
“Even if there is no current demand at the elite level, the working group is planning to look at the possibility of including Open Category races at Masters events in the future.”
The outcome highlights what has been one of the primary critiques of adding a third category to sporting competition. In spite of the outsized attention the issue has had, the incidence of transgender women competing against women in elite sport is exceedingly rare. The only out transgender woman who has competed at a high level of women’s swimming is Lia Thomas, who won an NCAA title in the 500 yard free in 2022 in 4:33.24.
While she had indicated in interviews the desire to pursue an international swimming career, Thomas has not competed since those NCAA Championships. USA Swimming rules regarding transgender participation, created in response to Thomas, would create additional hurdles for her participation against women in national or international level meets.
There are no known transgender women who have competed in women’s races at any World Aquatics events.
“For this inaugural event, the emphasis is on gaining further experience for future development and celebrating diversity,” World Aquatics said when they announced the category.
World Aquatics did not label the category as being specifically for transgender women, though that was the impetus for its creation. All swimmers, including cis-gender men and women, were eligible for the open category, but ultimately nobody chose to enter those events.
The registration deadlines for the Athens and Budapest stops of the World Cup are still upcoming.
Feels like it was either setup to fail through bad organisation or lack of support by World Aquatics. Surely they would have known if there were any real potential elite trans swimmers likely to enter. Would be interesting to hear if they had many enquiries from interested competitors.
Probably didn’t help that information about registration was emailed out 2 weeks before registration closed, seemingly only to people that had registered. Also registration info was only put on the World Aquatics website 3 days before registration closed.
Even if anyone was interested in competing they would have had very little time to register let alone plan their training for such an important event.
If they expected it to be an “elite… Read more »
If World Aquatics seriously wanted to do something to ensure trans athletes are included it would start at a much lower level. You can’t start at the top, it needs to be built from the ground up with trans athletes being involved. I would expect they would also find out trans athletes just want to feel welcome and not be treated differently by being put in a seperate category.
Yeah it’d be nice if it were for those reasons, but it was just to placate transphobes, mostly.
This isn’t much of a surprise, really. I can’t imagine that they honestly expected that any transgender athlete would subject themselves to the kind of public scrutiny that they’d be inviting for no real benefit, let alone a full field of athletes that met the qualification standard. Which, it should be noted, was looser than the standard for the elite women’s category.
The open category was never a serious idea. It’s solely for PR and legal cover. Any genuine attempt at inclusivity is going to have buy-in from the people that are purportedly being included, and it’s clear that isn’t happening here.
What’s more is that a separate category for elite transgender women can’t work because disqualifying them from women’s… Read more »
I can totally see them saying something like, we tried but you weren’t interested so we aren’t doing it again.
I’m not surprised. I’ve swam for my whole life and have met 2 swimmers who eventually came out as trans. I’ve only heard of 2 in the NCAA. It’s not a very common thing
There have been 3 who have been pretty open and in-the-media as of late (Schuyler Bailar, Lia Thomas, and Iszac Henig). Two of those three are transmen. A few other high level swimmers have come out as transgender and/or non-binary in recent decades – notably G Ryan.
But yes, in general, when you consider what needs to happen for a transwoman to be in an elite class of women’s swimming:
-Be a transgender woman
-Be interested in sports
-Be an elite athlete
-Be a swimmer
-Transition/begin HRT at a relatively-young age (in spite of the rhetoric, most trans people don’t start HRT until adulthood, if at all)
-Then return to elite level training/competition
The subset… Read more »
Interestingly of the events on offer none are really what would be considered Lia Thomas’s best events, I’d suggest that would be a 200m/400m freestyle.
That means Lia would potentially only qualify for 1 event, the 100m freestyle, with a time of 57.43 from 2016, not far under the QT of 58.08. In comparison the women’s 100m freestyle B cut time for the recent world champs was 56.15, A cut time was 54.25.
Also, Natalie Fahey at Southern Illinois University in 2019.
These are exactly the things people never consider. (They mostly just get hoodwinked into assuming every men’s gold medalist is gonna switch genders just to win more medals, or something.)
Just what if someone claims to be an early transitioner but decides for the early going to remain on the men’s team, can that person wear the faster women’s suit? Remember, denying their choice will undoubtedly cause more of the same issues with fairness and inclusion.
Oh my! World Aquatics set up the open category wrong. It should be open category and women category. The open category should be there for the best of the best to include women, intersex, trans, as well as men. It is the definitive inclusive category and should end the majority of complaints against fairness and inclusion. The women category, then, satisfies Title IX.
World Aquatics is not bound by Title IX.
This is a great idea. I can’t see a downside for any of the constituencies mentioned. Why should men have any problem with competing against trans women? It may not be everything trans women want, but it gives them a place to compete. Can someone explain why there were twice as many down votes as up votes.
I think anyone who doesn’t live under a rock, knew that Lia just wanted to stir the ncaa pot and not compete internationally.
Based on what evidence, besides your repeatedly-demonstrated distaste for trans people?
Common sense.
You just took the biggest L of the day so far congratulations.
Hey look I know we have different defenitions of “common sense” but to me the most “common sense” explanation is that Lia was a high level swimmer who wanted to keep swimming in college, like about 15000 other swimmers do every year.
But IDK your explanation definitely makes more sense if your goal is to demonize trans people, so I can see how you got there.
Ok.
Based on being nowhere near good enough to swim internationally
Nah Nancy Hogshed assured me mid-season that she was going to break the World Records. Don’t gaslight me now and pretend like she wasn’t. Nancy promised it and I think she’s qualified to know!!!
Not sure about stirring the pot. I am sure she would have figured out that being ostracized and made fun of by vast majority of the country isn’t something to be taken lightly.
Click bait
Oh yeah?
Just proves the media were spinning a story out of nothing
I believe any and all sides of the political spectrum were using this as a political pillar for their own gain
That’s what they do. They don’t care about people. We are a pawn in their power and money game. They don’t live in the same world we live in. It’s a sad state of affairs.
Transgender athletes deserve to swim!
No one is saying they can’t.
They do and they can but they don’t seem to want to at this point 🤷♀️
Just because there’s not elite trans swimmers doesn’t mean that trans swimmers don’t want to swim. It more likely means that trans swimmer’s don’t feel welcome or comfortable in swimming spaces.