Poll: Transgender athletes shouldn’t be allowed to compete against women at Olympics

by WorldTribune Staff, June 27, 2021

In a new Rasmussen Reports poll, 56 percent of likely voters said it is not fair to make women compete against transgender athletes at the Olympic Games.

The poll found that just 25 percent think it is fair and 19 percent are not sure.

Laurel Hubbard

The issue was prominent in the news this week after weightlifter Laurel Hubbard qualified for the games on New Zealand’s team, making history as an openly transgender athlete.

“We acknowledge that gender identity in sport is a highly sensitive and complex issue requiring a balance between human rights and fairness on the field of play,” said Kereyn Smith, the chief executive of the New Zealand Olympic Committee. “We are committed to supporting all eligible New Zealand athletes and ensuring their mental and physical well-being along with their high-performance needs while preparing for and competing at the Olympic Games are met.”

The Rasmussen survey found that most groups oppose having transgender athletes compete in women’s sports. For men, it was 59 percent who oppose to 25 percent who approve. For women, 54 percent of respondents were against it, while 25 percent approve.

Also opposed were black people, white people, Democrats, and Republicans, the poll found.

A transgender woman who once vowed to compete in the Olympics so she could “burn a U.S. flag on the podium” has qualified as an alternate for Team USA’s BMX freestyle event at the upcoming games in Tokyo, it was revealed Monday.

Chelsea Wolfe, 28, will compete if either of her qualifying teammates, Hannah Roberts and Perris Benegas, can’t.

Wolfe made her intentions clear last year in a since-deleted Facebook post about why she wanted to qualify, Fox News reported Monday.

“My goal is to win the Olympics so I can burn a U.S. flag on the podium,” Wolfe reportedly wrote on March 25, 2020 alongside an online article about how trans girls should be treated as biological males in school sports. “This is what they focus on during a pandemic. Hurting trans children.”

Meanwhile, American transgender runner CeCe Telfer’s Olympic dreams have been put on hold, reports say.

Telfer has been ruled ineligible to compete in the women’s 400-meter hurdles at the U.S. Olympic trials for not meeting the World Athletics eligibility regulations for certain women’s events, according to the Associated Press.

In 2019, Telfer became the first openly transgender woman to win an NCAA title. At the time, she was a fifth-year senior at Franklin Pierce.

If Telfer qualified, she would’ve made history as one of the first openly transgender athletes to ever compete in any Olympic event.

Telfer was previously listed as a qualified athlete for Friday’s opening heats, but she was missing from Wednesday’s list.

In 2019, World Athletics released new guidelines that cut off international women’s events between 400 meters and a mile to athletes whose testosterone levels were at 5 nonomoles per liter (nmol/L) or more, according to ESPN.

Also in 2019, World Athletics released new guidelines that cut off international women’s events between 400 meters and a mile to athletes whose testosterone levels were at 5 nonomoles per liter (nmol/L) or more, according to ESPN.


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