University of Pennsylvania transgender swimmer Lia Thomas — who spent the last three years on the male team as Will Thomas– has been busy smashing female pool records during the last couple of weeks. It is a story has generated plenty of national attention on both sides of the coin.
It has been hailed as a celebration for the trans community.
It has been lauded as the erosion of women’s sports.
Both could be true… if we want to be honest.
ANYYYYYYYYYWAYS… the clearly right-leaning OutKick.com had an opportunity to talk with another biological female on the Women’s Swim Team. Obviously, this is going to fall into the ‘erosion of women’s sports’ category, but the points that were made seemed pretty on point.
“Pretty much everyone individually has spoken to our coaches about not liking this. Our coach [Mike Schnur] just really likes winning. He’s like most coaches. I think secretly everyone just knows it’s the wrong thing to do,” the swimmer said.
“When the whole team is together, we have to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, go Lia, that’s great, you’re amazing.’ It’s very fake.”
For those keeping track, Thomas broke the Ivy League 500 freestyle record on Friday. Then Thomas set the nation’s best time in the 200 freestyle on Saturday. The time also set pool, meet, and Penn program records.
Then in the 1650 freestyle final, Thomas also set new Penn, pool, and meet records. In a race where her teammate finished in second place — 38 seconds back.
The next stop for Thomas is crushing all-time marks.
Something that could happen
“The Ivy League is not a fast league for swimming, so that’s why it’s particularly ridiculous that we could potentially have an NCAA champion. That’s unheard of coming from the Ivy League,” Thomas’ teammate explained.
“On paper, if Lia Thomas gets back down to Will Thomas’ best times, those numbers are female world records. Faster than all the times Katie Ledecky went in college. Faster than any other Olympian you can think of. His times in three events are [female] world records.”
Here are the current NCAA women’s swimming records:
200 free: 1:39:10 (Missy Franklin)
500 free: 4:24:06 (Katie Ledecky)
1650 free: 15:03:31 (Katie Ledecky)
Here are Thomas’ best times racing as a male the first three years at Penn versus where they currently stand on the women’s team:
200 Free: 1:39.31 as Will, 1:41.93 current.
500 Free: 4:18.72 versus 4:34:06
1,650 Free: 14:54.76 against 15:59.71
Outside of the 1,650 Free, it is not going to be a shock to see those times approach all-time records as the season continues.
“There are a bunch of comments on the Internet about how, ‘Oh, these girls are just letting this happen. They should just boycott or protest.’ At the end of the day, it’s an individual sport. If we protest it, we’re only hurting ourselves because we’re going to miss out on all that we’ve been working for,” the interview continued.
“When I have kids, I kinda hope they’re all boys because if I have any girls that want to play sports in college, good luck. [Their opponents] are all going to be biological men saying that they’re women,” Thomas’ teammate told OutKick. “Right now we have one, but what if we had three on the team? There’d be three less girls competing.”
There is more to the story on OutKick, if you wanna swing over there, but those were the best quotes.
