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ESPN Daily

Swimmer Lia Thomas and NCAA Transgender Policy

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.63.9K Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2022

⏱️ 43 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This season, University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas took to the pool for first time as a transgender woman, on the women’s team. Thomas’ gender transition was several years in the making, and she adhered to guidelines from her sport’s governing bodies as she returned to competition. But when Thomas started winning and breaking records this season, her story made news well beyond the swimming world, and critics of transgender inclusion in sports took particular note. As Thomas heads to the Ivy League championships, ESPN’s Katie Barnes tells the story of this barrier-breaking swimmer, the policies and politics that surround her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

ESPN Daily is presented by QuickBooks. Success starts with Intuit QuickBooks.

0:07.7

Katie Barnes, the Ivy League Swimming and Diving Championships start today, Wednesday at Harvard.

0:14.3

And this is not an event that usually gets major national attention, but this year is very different. Why is that?

0:26.2

So this year, Leah Thomas, who is a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania, will be

0:32.6

competing for Penn at the Ivy League Championships.

0:39.4

Leah is a transgender woman,

0:41.9

and she is swimming on the women's swim team,

0:47.8

and her success on that team has garnered a lot of national attention all season.

0:51.7

The historic performances of a swimmer at the University of Pennsylvania are getting a lot of attention in fueling a debate over transgender athletes in college sports. There's buzz that she would become the NCAA's first

0:58.6

Division I transgender national champion. This comes as roughly 280 anti-LGBQ plus bills

1:05.3

have been proposed in state legislatures targeting transgender youth access to sports and health care.

1:13.6

Leah really embodies the nightmare scenario for a lot of people who criticize transgender inclusion in sports,

1:22.6

in that she has a history of swimming on the men's team at the University of Pennsylvania,

1:28.9

and then for her senior season is swimming on the women's team

1:32.0

and is having a tremendous amount of success in doing so.

1:38.4

And that has provided a lot of fodder for people who don't think that transgender women in particular should be allowed

1:45.8

to compete in girls and women's sports. And so what's at stake here, Katie, as Leah Thomas is

1:52.8

about to take her mark to dive into the pool, given the backdrop you just gave us, what is on the line

1:58.0

here? It's a simple question of who is allowed to be a woman and who is allowed to win.

2:10.4

Maybe you've heard of Leah Thomas.

2:14.2

Maybe you've seen the headlines that have turned an otherwise obscure college swimmer into a frontier in America's unending culture war.

2:22.3

But beneath all that outrage and all that disagreement, are real questions.

...

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