Current Events > Trans swimmer breaking NCAA records, destroying the competition in meets

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://people.com/sports/upenn-swimmer-lia-thomas-who-is-transgender-continues-to-break-womens-records/

University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, who is transgender, broke multiple records for the school's women's swim team at the Zippy Invitational over the weekend.
Thomas, 22, kicked off the three-day event, held at the University of Akron, strong in the preliminaries Friday. She set a new pool and meet record in the 500-yard freestyle, according to UPenn. The Austin, Texas, native kept the same momentum in the finals and swam over 12 seconds faster, coming in first at 4:34.06. Her time currently marks the best in the country for the event and sets a new program record.

On Saturday, Thomas won the 200-yard freestyle by less than seven seconds and set a new pool, meet, and program record of 1:41.93, the fastest time in the nation, the school shared on its website.
She continued her record-breaking streak Sunday, winning the 1,650-yard freestyle by more than 38 seconds with a time of 15:59.71, according to UPenn. Her teammate Anna Kalandadze finished second.

The Quakers came in second overall at the end of the tournament.

Before coming out as transgender, Thomas swam for UPenn's men's team for three years. She joined the women's team in her senior year after taking a break during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Opening up about the transition, Thomas told Penn Today: "The process of coming out as being trans and continuing to swim was a lot of uncertainty and unknown around an area that's usually really solid. Realizing I was trans threw that into question. Was I going to keep swimming? What did that look like?"

She concluded, "Being trans has not affected my ability to do this sport and being able to continue is very rewarding."

Also worth noting she was a 6 time Ivy League Finalist in for men in the 3 years prior to this. Her swim times are slower than they were before the transition, but still clearly fast enough to be #1 in womens swimming this year.

I feel bad for the other women who are competing, this doesn't seem very fair

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Do you have nothing better to do with your live than cry about black or trans people on a dead video game forum

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Are you a big fan of University of PA swimming? Is that why this concerned you so much to post about it? I bet you care so much about swimming.

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I have a sneaking suspicion that TC has never cared about women's swimming prior to this

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Good for her. Congrats to her accomplishments.

oh did you expect me to lose sleep over this and have it affect my life in any way like it does yours for some reason? lol.

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Cpt_Pineapple posted...

User Info: AngelsNAirwav3s
? Block User Since: Mar 2006 Karma: 5124 Active Posts: 84

what is the idea user level, karma, and AMP ratio when folks do this? how do you win? >_> I average like 10 AMP and my karma lines up with the creation date and I'm a troll alt apparently. But then you have new users who have like 10 karma/ 400 AMP and ? Blocks with 5k karma/80 AMP that fit this criteria too. like wut?

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AngelsNAirwav3s posted...

I feel bad for the other women who are competing, this doesn't seem very fair

Who cares? When you got high enough up in athletics, none of the competition is fair.

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VipaGTS posted...

Good for her. Congrats to her accomplishments.

oh did you expect me to lose sleep over this and have it affect my life in any way like it does yours for some reason? lol.

I got no problem with her, she is following the rules and kicking ass

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Doom_Art posted...

I have a sneaking suspicion that TC has never cared about women's swimming prior to this

They dont. The same users i see posting in these types of topics are the same people i will see in topics about the WNBA shitting on the league.

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AngelsNAirwav3s posted...

I got no problem with her, she is following the rules and kicking ass

Bull shit lol. We all know why you made this topic. If you got no problem then why did you open the topic with I feel bad.

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Back_Stabbath posted...

what is the idea user level, karma, and AMP ratio when folks do this? how do you win? >_> I average like 10 AMP and my karma lines up with the creation date and I'm a troll alt apparently. But then you have new users who have like 10 karma/ 400 AMP and ? Blocks with 5k karma/80 AMP that fit this criteria too. like wut?

USER INFO: BACK_STABBATH

Sage
User Since: Feb 2010
Karma: 3148
Active Posts: 11

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Admittedly I haven't and don't care about the very specific sport of competitive women's swimming, but I can see how this might frustrate people within that circle.

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Cpt_Pineapple posted...

User Info: DocileOrangeCup
Ancient User
Since: Sep 2014
Karma: 2214
Active Posts: 401

Oh my God do I really have that many posts

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Gratz to her

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Anteaterking posted...

Who cares? When you got high enough up in athletics, none of the competition is fair.

I imagine the women getting screwed over by it care.

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Just have 1 team for all genders. Problem solved.

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Yeah, why should anyone here give a shit about some stupid women, right?

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EmbraceOfDeath posted...

I imagine the women getting screwed over by it care.

Okay.

How sad are we about the people who had to play against Derrick Henry in high school? The difference between his physical ability and the average high school player is at least as large as the difference between your average male and female athlete in many sports.

The point is just that athletics is just generally unfair. Hard work alone isn't going to overcome genetic differences once you reach elite high school/lower college level. This is a different genetic difference than "just being born really fast or really big", but as long as this swimmer isn't just...fake transitioning...

Like I feel like that's the implication for a lot of people here. That this person is pretending to be trans just to beat records that a small fraction of people cared about. And doing it in a time period where over half of society is just going to add an asterisk to that record anyway. What's the master plan here?

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Did yall watch Shaq or Lebron in high school? They dominated everyone and completely crushed them. Guess we should have banned them.

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Didnt that trans weight lifter from NZ not win anything at the olympics?

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Ok.

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spikethedevil posted...

Didnt that trans weight lifter from NZ not win anything at the olympics?

That's because she wasn't good, at all. Terrible form and honestly didn't look like they trained very hard.

Dusk_ posted...

That's because she wasn't good, at all. Terrible form and honestly didn't look like they trained very hard.

So what youre saying is this person likely trained very hard? Ok.

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MabusIncarnate posted...

Are you a big fan of University of PA swimming? Is that why this concerned you so much to post about it? I bet you care so much about swimming.

I have no doubt that tcs primary concern is the fair and equitable competition level of his most beloved sports - PA collegiate womebs state swimming.

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Anteaterking posted...

Okay.

How sad are we about the people who had to play against Derrick Henry in high school? The difference between his physical ability and the average high school player is at least as large as the difference between your average male and female athlete in many sports.

The point is just that athletics is just generally unfair. Hard work alone isn't going to overcome genetic differences once you reach elite high school/lower college level. This is a different genetic difference than "just being born really fast or really big", but as long as this swimmer isn't just...fake transitioning...

Like I feel like that's the implication for a lot of people here. That this person is pretending to be trans just to beat records that a small fraction of people cared about. And doing it in a time period where over half of society is just going to add an asterisk to that record anyway. What's the master plan here?

I dont disagree with you about the inherent unfairness (I would call it something different) of competition but when there is a separation made between competitors based on their genders for the purpose of creating more fairness examples like this break the system and are inherently more unfair than intended.

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The throwaway alts are coming out.

Good for her, I'm glad to see members of our community thriving in transition.

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EmbraceOfDeath posted...

I imagine the women getting screwed over by it care.

Maybe an increase in steroid use is around the corner. From women feeling like they need a competitive edge to keep up.

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gunplagirl posted...

The throwaway alts are coming out.

Good for her, I'm glad to see members of our community thriving in transition.

this post is not ironic. hilarious.

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BilalPowell posted...

Just have 1 team for all genders. Problem solved.

Then there wouldn't be Women in sport.

Like when the Williams sisters got destroyed by that random guy.

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ignoring the obvious competitive advantage that some male-to-female trans athletes have over females is more ignorant than saying they shouldn't be competing with the females.

why can't people, even if they believe they should be allowed to compete, not be allowed to state that fact? Not be allowed to re-state the data?

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Elite User
Since: Mar 2019
Karma: 870
Active Posts: 175
Total Badges: 88

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Truly a gifted athlete.

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There was already a topic about this like a week ago before one of the mods locked it. This will probably end up locked by the end of the night.

Imagine the balls you have to have to do this on such a big stage

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So why even separate sports by sex at all? Its not meant to be separated by gender, but sex. People just have a tendency to say gender as a replacement word for sex because it also means intercourse.

But no it isnt fair and ignores science.

No matter how many hormones you take, that doesnt ever change your skeletal structure, red blood cell count and lung capacity. Those last two are really important for swimming.

spikethedevil posted...

Didnt that trans weight lifter from NZ not win anything at the olympics?

Dusk_ posted...

That's because she wasn't good, at all. Terrible form and honestly didn't look like they trained very hard.

VipaGTS posted...

So what youre saying is this person likely trained very hard? Ok.

This argument is what is made in bad faith. I dont think anyone is saying that ANY man regardless of training can beat any professional woman. I am a pretty strong dude but I am not going to try to claim I can contend with female mixed martial arts professionals, they'd probably snap me in half >.<

Truly inspiring, these records may never be broken.

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pfh1001 posted...

There was already a topic about this like a week ago before one of the mods locked it. This will probably end up locked by the end of the night.

Yeah just shut down any conversation about it, sure.
Thats what Yahoo news did to their comments section when they got roasted too much by their reader base. If no one can object, then certainly everyone is in agreement right? Lollll.

My kitten ate a whole ass string bean. Is that ok

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spikethedevil posted...

Didnt that trans weight lifter from NZ not win anything at the olympics?

The one in her 40s, who had come back to the sport a few years prior after taking a 15 year break?


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Good for her, a very promising athlete.

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Ysmir posted...

Do you have nothing better to do with your live than cry about black or trans people on a dead video game forum

No need for hostility, bruv. TC is merely posting a current article.


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Naysaspace posted...

ignoring the obvious competitive advantage that some male-to-female trans athletes have over females is more ignorant than saying they shouldn't be competing with the females.

why can't people, even if they believe they should be allowed to compete, not be allowed to state that fact? Not be allowed to re-state the data?

Some people have advantages. Try running a sprint against Usain Bolt.

What would you have this woman do exactly, not compete because of her condition? That seems very unfair to me.

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Vicious_Dios posted...

No need for hostility, bruv. TC is merely posting a current article.

And its especially hilarious since that user does the exact same thing on a daily basis. I wonder why the user has such a different opinion on this compared to the topics and posts made by the user over and over all day long

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gatorsPENSbucs posted...

And its especially hilarious since that user does the exact same thing on a daily basis. I wonder why the user has such a different opinion on this compared to the topics and posts made by the user over and over all day long

Agreed. Very odd behavior.

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Good for her!

Shocking

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ColdOne666 posted...

Then there wouldn't be Women in sport.

Like when the Williams sisters got destroyed by that random guy.

But nobody would be offended. Which is more important?

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