How sports data can guide transgender athlete eligibility

The Biden administration has waded into the transgender athlete eligibility issue. The Supreme Court has also ruled on the topic in West Virginia. 

When politicians or the courts make such decisions, in the name of fairness, we must ask who is being included and who is being excluded in this fairness debate.   

A more salient question is, who (politicians, courts or sports organizations) is best qualified to make such rulings? Or is there some other option?  

In 2022, FINA, the world swimming governing body, followed the science for their sport and banned almost all transgender females from competing in women’s elite events once they have gone through puberty. They cited the physical advantage that transgender females have post-puberty over cisgender (phenotypic) women. At the heart of their decision, they say, is preserving the spirit and fairness of competition.   

People who compete in sports, games or intellectual pursuits, push themselves to achieve excellence and beat their competition.  Individuals make great personal sacrifices to reach personal bests and achieve peak performance when it matters the most. 

In certain competitions, gender is a nonissue.   

The 2022 Scripps National Spelling Bee had seven boys and five girls among its 12 finalists, and a 14-year-old girl was crowned champion.  The 2023 competition finalists will likely be similarly populated.    

The same gender neutrality appears to hold for horse racing jockeys finishing “in the money.” 

Once we focus on competitions where differences in physical size, body weight, bone density and/or muscle density provide advantages, then gender can impact results.  Competitive swimming certainly falls within this rubric, and the data support this fact. 

Looking at the world records for the men’s and women’s distances and swimming strokes in Olympic events, men’s times were on average 10 percent faster than women’s times.   The largest percentage differences were in the shortest distance events, while the smallest percentage differences were in longer distance events.  Men have a clear advantage over women in competitive swimming. 

Competitors in women’s swimming, by its very designation and classification, rightly expect their competition to share the same biology as themselves.   

If such women were given the opportunity to participate in an open-gender division, they would understand their choice and the associated headwinds.    However, when a transgender female athlete becomes eligible to compete in a women’s division, the goal posts have shifted without their consent or agreement.  This is akin to changing the rules of the competition. 

Phenotypic women who have trained for years to be competitive may find themselves on the losing end to a person whose biological advantages are near insurmountable.  

Two questions must be addressed.  First, is this commensurate with the spirit of the competition?  Second, if the transgender athlete wins the competition, what does the victory mean? 

To address the first question, sports organizations typically define two distinct divisions, men’s and women’s, to preserve and support competition.  To achieve this, should the women’s division be a protected classification open to cisgender women, while the men’s division recast as an open division, giving transgender females the opportunity to participate? 

A less desirable alternative is to use handicaps to shift the time of a transgender female swimmer so that the playing field is essentially leveled. Bowlers and golfers are familiar with this concept.  However, with such a system, it becomes unclear what a world record would look like.   

There are precedents for men and women competing against each other with handicaps.  Recall the 1973 “Battle of the Sexes” tennis match when Billie Jean King, then ranked as one of the world’s top women’s tennis player, soundly defeated 55 years old Bobby Riggs. In this match, the age difference provided the handicap.  In contrast, in the 1992 tennis match between 40 years old Jimmy Connors and 35 years old Martina Navratilova, rules were changed to give Navratilova a chance to compete, including Connors only having one serve and defending one-half of the doubles alley. Even with such handicaps, Connors was victorious.  

To address the second question, beating the competition is highly dependent on the nature of the competition.   Would a transgender female athlete appreciate her victory, knowing that she possesses a biological edge that occurred with exposure to testosterone during puberty, which hormone therapy post-puberty can attenuate, but not eliminate? 

It seems there is no practical way to provide a level playing field in women’s sports unless transgender females are excluded from competing against phenotypic women, or their performance is adjusted to reflect their birth biology.  That is why college sports (including ice hockey, basketball, volleyball, soccer, lacrosse, golf, tennis track and field, swimming) have both men’s and women’s teams, recognizing their biologically driven performance differences. 

Note that no one is discussing forbidding transgender men from competing in men’s divisions.  The reason is that such men would be at a distinct biological disadvantage in football, hockey and other sports where bone density and muscle density contribute to success.  This situation makes such choices a nonissue for debate. 

Organizations that oversee elite competitions, like the International Olympic Committee and the National Collegiate Athletic Association, will need to continue to review and modify their policies.  To date, their analyses appear long on feeling and short on substance.  On the other hand, FINA made a clear science-based statement with their decision, which should inform policies for numerous other oversight entities. 

When politics (on either side of the aisle) rather than data and science attempt to influence or override biology, the results are certain to be disastrous.  

Competition drives people to achieve their very best. Being inclusive in competition is critically important.  Yet, inclusive does not mean that everyone is eligible to participate in all competitions.  Indeed, preserving competition for all athletes, the overwhelming majority of which have not modified their biological gender, must not be dismissed.   

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a founder professor in computer science and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A data scientist, he applies his expertise in data-driven risk-based decision-making to evaluate and inform public policy. He is also the founder of the Bracketodds website, a STEM Learning Lab at the university.