What If They Held A Swim Event For Trans Athletes And Nobody Showed Up?

Because This Was Never About Inclusivity

Photo by dylan nolte on Unsplash

The swimming races in the World Cup that were supposed to welcome transgender athletes have been canceled because nobody signed up to participate, according to World Aquatics. These were races where anyone could join, swimming 50 or 100 meters using any swimming style. These races were supposed to begin in Berlin on Friday.

"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," it said.

"The World Aquatics Open Category Working Group will continue its work and engagement with the aquatics community on Open Category events."

Sharron Davies - a vocal critic of transgender women competing in women's sport - posted on social media: "If trans women aren't going to get the physical benefit of racing females instead of other males, they're not interested!"

Well, of course they’re not interested. This was never about inclusion: it had everything to do with validating mediocre male athletes who identify as women that they would have a better shot at smashing records.


The organization in charge of swimming made a "gender inclusion policy" in June last year during the world championships in Budapest.

In the next month, they created a group of people called a task force to study this issue, and that led to the new category for transgender athletes.

Before this change, transgender athletes were not allowed to compete in big events like the Olympics and world championships.