Mick Hartley

Henley trans fears is the Telegraph headline:

Rowing umpires are in uproar after being told they were not allowed under British Rowing policy to question the gender of any junior competitors.

“If we have a crew of what we think are junior boys and yet they declare as junior girls,” said one, “then we just have to accept it.”

Ahead of Friday's crucial vote on the future of British Rowing's transgender policy, several umpires listened in horror to being informed that they would not be permitted, under the governing body’s rules, to incorporate gender into their assessment of fairness.

In a recent Thames Region umpires’ briefing an update on British Rowing’s rules and regulations suggested that under no circumstances could an umpire query a junior rower’s gender.

Does it matter? Well yes, it does. In 2008 the British women's squad selected for the Beijing Olympics staged a warm-up race against a crew of 15-year-old boys from the local William Borlase School, and lost.

As it stands, umpires must accept whatever gender is entered for a junior rower on the British Rowing online entry system (BROE). “But with juniors, their parents can enter their information for them,” said Turner, who expressed concern that the system was open to being exploited. “

If you get a medal and you apply to certain universities, they won’t ask what type of medal you got. The rowing system is such that it will just say, ‘Yes, this person won a Henley medal as a junior’. That means, depending on the university, that you could receive £1,000, £2,000, £3,000 as a bursary or as a rowing scholarship. So, there is a financial motivation for the boys to do this.

“A lot of umpires are very uncomfortable. All of the questions are based around the unfairness of it all, that it just shouldn’t be happening. The fact that trans women can make an ass out of the law means that the law needs to be changed.”

British Rowing policy mandates that trans rowers over the age of 16 can only compete in the female category if they prove their testosterone serum levels are below five nanomoles per litre over a 12-month period. But it leaves the path open for Under-16 boys to identify as female without the need for any testosterone suppression.

Not, of course, that the testosterone rule means anything very much. it's a fig-leaf way of pretending that your rules are somehow fair and science-based, while ignoring the huge in-built advantage in male strength and stamina.

There is now pressure on British Rowing to defy World Rowing by ensuring that the women’s races are reserved solely for those born female. The organisation’s 31,500 members have until 5pm on Friday to vote on their favoured trans policy, with one option to “adopt a new approach to the women’s/female category in particular, that allows only athletes who have been declared female at birth to compete in the ‘female’ category”.