Mick Hartley

Sticking with cycling – surely the worst sport offender now when it comes to allowing men into women's races – here's Hannah Arensman, interviewed in the Telegraph:

Hannah Arensman radiates a love for her sport too pure to be feigned or contrived. As the fourth of nine children, growing up in Morganton, North Carolina, she gravitated towards cycling as an outlet for her irrepressible energy. “I’ve never been able to sit still,” she reflects. “I had a ball doing cyclocross in particular, a wonderful world where road and mountain bike collide. I loved being in shape, I loved going fast, I loved mastering a technical section. It’s like playing an instrument. When you hit it right, it’s just gorgeous.”

It was a passion she channelled with distinction, wearing the colours of her country, winning national medals, even nurturing a dream of representing the United States at next summer’s Paris Olympics. And yet last December, at the age of 24, she simply walked away. The immediate trigger for that decision was not injury or dwindling form, but the fact that in her final race, at the US cyclocross championships in Connecticut, she lost out on a podium place to a biological male. “There are,” she says, “a million different levels where it hurts.”

As we've seen, though, women cyclists who speak out face being vilified and ostracised from the world of professional cycling.

Arensman is breaking the omerta, conscious that the fight is no longer hers alone and that, ultimately, the sanctity and integrity of the female category are at stake. “I realised that if an opportunity presented itself to say something on behalf of other women, then I would take it,” she says. “This has gone on long enough, it has gone far enough. It should never have reached this point, it should never have been allowed. Someone has to take responsibility. This is not fair sport, and the governing bodies, who should have made the rules at the beginning, need to realise it. The very people who should be protecting our sport are not doing so.”

Her first inkling of the gathering storm came last year, when Killips, previously unknown in a cyclocross world where most riders start as children, began winning against national fields despite glaring flaws in technique. “Killips doesn’t really have a lot of skill, but stayed with us because of strength,” Arensman argues.

“Here was somebody who wouldn’t keep up very well with the elite guys, but who was doing fine keeping up with the elite women. It was dispiriting, knowing that Killips was taking hormones to suppress testosterone. Every woman in these races has trained so hard to be there. There aren’t very many of us. Yes, it’s exciting to receive payouts equal to the men’s, to see the women’s numbers grow. But then to have a biological male jump in and start taking our records? There’s no fairness to it.”

And of course there are the usual blokes in balaclavas cheering on the misogyny:

The angrier Arensman grew, the more threats there were for her to acquiesce. On Dec 11, the day of what would be her last race, members of the John Brown Gun Club (a Left-leaning group that claims guns are a necessary protection against armed Right-wingers) mobilised at the course, holding up transgender pride flags and wearing balaclavas to conceal their identities. “Sounds like a weird thing for gun clubs to do,” the Connecticut chapter tweeted, “until you realise there’s a massive TERF [trans-exclusionary radical feminist] problem in cycling.” The same extremists later celebrated Arensman’s retirement, writing: “Hope we helped her find the door. She won’t be missed.”

Reminded of the intimidation, Arensman can only despair of the toxic backlash that any attempt to discuss the transgender controversy attracts. “It just adds to the complete disrespect,” she says. “When you have to use physical violence to keep other people in check, so you can do whatever you want, there’s something seriously wrong. It’s a form of tyranny.”…

She would finish the race sandwiched between two transgender riders, with Killips third and Jenna Lingwood, who entered men’s races as “Jimmy” as recently as 2018, fifth. Her sister Allison, also a highly accomplished cyclist who competed internationally, wept as she watched, convinced Hannah had been cheated. “For my family, it ripped them to pieces,” she says. “I know there are so many women torn up about this, but they’re afraid to say anything for fear of losing sponsors, of being beaten down on social media, the main platform for gaining sponsorship in the first place. So they won’t say anything, even though they’re infuriated.”