Two trans-identified male cyclists have finished first in races over the weekend in Switzerland and Washington state.
On Friday, Claire Law, a trans-identified male software engineer at Amazon, became the 1/2/3 Women’s Northwest Elimination Champion at the Jerry Baker Velodrome in Richmond, Washington. In an elimination race, the last-placed rider who crosses the finish line drops out each lap, with the winner the last person standing.
Law’s opponents were teenage girls, who he can be seen easily defeating in a livestream of the event. In the playback, at the moment that Lucy Dorer, 15, who took third place, was eliminated, Lucy Scoville, aged 17, who eventually took second place, can be seen completely slowing down, and allowing Law, 35, to speed off into the distance to a very easy victory.
“Law is just such in overall strong form, that the contest won’t be there,” the commentator said at the time.
The Independent Council on Women’s Sports, a network of women athletes who advocate for female protected categories in sports, tweeted that Law has “appeared on women’s podiums consistently for years and joins over 50 men competing in women’s cycling in recent years.”
The following day, in Zürich, Switzerland, Kiana Gysin, another trans-identified male, was awarded first place at the women’s fixed gear racing final, which was part of the Zuricrit event being held in the centre of the country’s largest city. Gysin, who had also won first place in the heat, defeated his opponent, Dani Morsehead, an American, by a single second compared to her best lap time.
Gysin, who is currently the fixed gear bicycle female world champion, after defeating his competition in Berlin in June, was awarded a prize of 500 Swiss Francs, which at the time of writing is valued at $569.12 USD. For taking second place, Morsehead only received 300 Francs, totalling $341.48.
This July, the UCI, the world governing body for cycling, banned transgender athletes that had gone through male puberty from competing in any of their sanctioned events.
“Given the current state of scientific knowledge, it is also impossible to rule out the possibility that biomechanical factors such as the shape and arrangement of the bones in their limbs may constitute a lasting advantage for female transgender athletes,” the UCI said in a statement, acknowledging that their previous policy of restricting testosterone levels of transgender athletes didn’t go far enough.
While USA Cycling has yet to implement stricter restrictions on trans athletes, which allows Law to compete in their events, over in the UK, their governing body in May explicitly restricted their female cycling category to only biological women, including those who identified as “trans men,” if they had yet to take any hormone therapy. For trans-identified males, and all others, a new “open” category was created, with no restrictions on entering.
