Reuters
Olympic logo. [Source: Reuters]
Excluding trans athletes from competing is despicable and reason should prevail when deciding who is allowed to take part in women’s events in high-level sports, a transgender woman and former Olympic champion Sandra Forgues said.
Forgues, who won a men’s canoeing gold medal at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics as Wilfrid Forgues with Frank Adisson as well as five world titles, argues that most transgender women do not have any advantage over cisgender women.
After retiring from canoeing at the top level in the early 2000s, Forgues came out as a transgender woman in 2016 and now plays handball at a low level and is a registered member of the kayaking French federation.
Forgues said she empathised with Halba Diouf, the French sprinter whose dream of participating in the Paris Olympics was shattered when World Athletics (WA) banned transgender women from elite female competitions.
Diouf had been training hard to improve her 200 metres time in the hope of running on home soil at the 2024 Games, only her ambitions were dashed in March when governing body WA banned transgender women who have gone through male puberty from competing in women’s events, citing a “need to protect the female category”.
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