Sports Wrangle A blog from Will Cope: Sports journalist & academic

Transgender Athletes - Acceptance and Needs

Sport is supposed to be for everyone. In its most raw, most fundamental form, if you want to play sport, then you should be able to participate. According to the United Nations, “sport builds bridges between individuals and across communities” and must, they continue, be used to “promote understanding and support…for positive social change.”

So, if that is the case, why have The International Swimming Federation (FINA) recently voted to approve a new policy that will restrict most transgender athletes from competing in elite women’s aquatics competitions? Furthermore, why has The International Rugby League (IRL) banned transgender players from women’s international competitions?

Basically, the new ruling in swimming states, that if you transition from male to female before you reach the age of 12 (i.e., prior to reaching puberty) you are ok to take part. If you don’t there is no place for you in competitive areas of the sport. The decision in Rugby League was made on the grounds of perceived risk – by that I assume that they mean that if a woman is tackled by a transgender woman, the ‘hit’ will be harder, more painful and could lead to greater injury.

These moves follow one recently taken by cycling’s world governing body, the UCI, who has toughened its stance on when riders can compete if they are transitioning from male to female.

On the flip side, late last year the International Olympic Committee (IOC) released a framework document on ‘fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations’. The IOC said that it consulted with more than 250 athletes and stakeholders and concluded that, “athletes should not be deemed to have an unfair or disproportionate competitive advantage due to their sex variations, physical appearance and/or transgender status.”

So, who’s right and who’s wrong? Well, that’s up to you and your personal stance, but there are plenty of convincing and divisive arguments out there.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in April of this year that transgender women have no place in women’s sport. Former British Olympic swimmer, Sharon Davies agrees, saying that in a sport where fractions of a second make a difference, it is the right call to exclude those who were born male from a female competition. However, former elite women’s rugby league player Caroline Layt, who played in Australia as a transgender woman, says by creating an exclusion policy is sending the wrong message to young people, and telling trans kids that they are not worthy!

Ultimately of course, if you pit men against women in a sporting environment where speed or strength play a significant role, men tend to win. Women, biologically, are often considered smaller and less strong and that is sometimes a deciding factor in sport. But, it is not always a factor. In golf for example - a sport of skill, poise and judgement, where keeping a cool head, taking your time and evaluating your options are crucial – Swedish female player Linn Grant recently won on the DP World tour.

But actually, for me, it is not about winning or succeeding, it is about giving everyone, no matter how they were born and what journey they have been on, the chance to acquire a seat at the sporting table. Being ‘accepted’ in a global society that still struggles to get its collective head around the issue of people wanting to change their gender is much more powerful than a win, a title, a medal or a podium finish. I don’t know what it is like to live a life where you feel as though you don’t belong, in a body that feels false and an existence that feels alien. Most people are generally happy in their skin but if you are not and if you are brave enough to take the step to change that, shouldn’t the rest of us not just applaud that and throw open the door of acceptance?

Perhaps those athletes who train for years to make small improvements in their performance and are beaten by someone with a chromosomal difference would beg to differ. But, offering someone the opportunity to take part is surely the biggest win that sport can provide and, if ‘positive social change’ is ever going to be achieved, then the duty on all sports to take a lead has surely never been greater.

Joe Root - England's Greatest? Time for some inner reflection

There are many things that former England cricket captain Joe Root and I have in common: we were both born in Sheffield; both grew up in the same village; both have the weighty burden of supporting Sheffield United and both have scored ten thousand test runs. Actually, the last one isn’t true but three out of four is not too bad!

There are 13 years between us so although we attended the same primary school, and played football or cricket on the same fields and pitches, our paths never crossed! Well, again, not strictly true because my parents still live in the house I was brought up in, and Root lives in a palatial pad in the same village, so when I go and see my folks, I occasionally see him drive past in his top grade motor car.

Root has rightly grabbed many of the sporting headlines this week for his impressive batting milestone, going through ten thousand test runs during his innings of 176 against New Zealand in the second test at Trent Bridge. It was the 27th time that the Yorkshireman had reached three figures and on 13 of those occasions (like in Nottingham) he made at least 150; not bad stats at all.

He’s been called England’s greatest ever batsman and if he continues at his current rate, there is little doubt that he will retire as the best of the lot in terms of runs scored.

This, of course, is the first test series for England since he stepped down as captain, passing that baton on to Ben Stokes. And it seems that he is not now burdened with the pressure of captaincy. Sure, he will still be a leader and he will still be revered and respected but he won’t have the same pressure of being the skipper.

Sir Alistair Cook - the man who relinquished the England captain’s role to Root - wrote in his autobiography that when he (Cook) took over from Andrew Strauss, he could see that Strauss was “wearing the role like a concrete overcoat.” When Root was toiling as batsman and captain during the series defeat to the West Indies in the Caribbean earlier this year, BBC TMS Commentator Johnathan Agnew said that Root looked tired, stressed and fed up. Now though, without the role of captain, Root seems rejuvenated, fresh and free.

To that end, I can empathise. Many people like to see themselves as leaders, want to set the tone or example and like to be the figurehead. Some are good leaders, natural even, some are not. But even the good ones, perhaps even the best ones, inevitably sacrifice something when they lead. As a leader you have to think of others, you have to consider the group. You spend precious time and energy ensuring that the camp is happy rather than worrying only about yourself. Your tasks and responsibilities are inherently based around assessing other people’s contribution, where they can improve and managing their expectations. The result of all this is self sacrifice. Yes, you may have a fancier title, more attention and perhaps a fatter pay packet, but the sacrifice is that your job role demands that you focus on others rather than yourself.

I manage a team and am responsible for a lot of people. I help them develop, provide them with opportunities, and make the environment as positive as possible so they can maximise their potential. All the while, whilst I am working on them, they too are working on themselves. But rarely do the leaders enjoy time to develop, and the weight of leadership can mean that you simply don’t have enough hours in the day to work on ‘you’.

For Root though, now that he has the time for some inner focus, we may see the best version of ‘him’. And that will almost certainly be bad news for international bowlers the world over.

LIV Golf - Golf's New Kid On The Block.

Aristotle thought he knew a thing or two about love, life and the universe. The Greek philosopher – who was influenced by the likes of Plato, Socrates and Pythagoras some two and a half thousand years ago - believed that “money-making as an end in itself is endemic to the life of pleasure, not the good life”. It was part of his wider beliefs that “only by becoming excellent can one achieve a happiness that results in the best kind of human life”.

Well, try telling that to Phil Mickleson, Dustin Johnson, Louis Oosthuizen, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Graeme McDowell and others. Those six are part of a wider group of 48 golfers who are involved in the first LIV Golf tournament in Hertfordshire (London, they are calling it) this week (June 9-11th).

LIV Golf – so named as LIV are the Roman numerals for 54 – is golf’s new kid on the block, the competition that is aiming to spice up the sport, make it more interesting, and attempt to make it more broadcast friendly. Three rounds of 18 holes (one round per day, so 54 holes in total), with shotgun starts (players starting at the same time on different holes), played across eight tournaments. There are 12 teams of four players and prize money is handed out for best individual and team scores.

And there’s our first mention of money; the rewards are eye watering! Each event carries a prize purse of $25m, with $20m going to the individual players. With no cut, each of the 48 players take a chunk of the prize pot, meaning that the ‘loser’ will walk away with $120 thousand, whilst the winner banks $20m…for three rounds of golf!

In the same way that when Twenty20 cricket was first introduced, the naysayers and purists are up in arms. There are those that say that there is nothing wrong with the very profitable current professional golf structure and that LIV’s ‘flashy’ style of the sport is unnecessary. There are some that are astonished and disgusted by the amount of cash that is being splashed; ‘sport shouldn’t be about the money, it should be about the challenge’, they believe.

Well, there is that (probably a different debate for a different day) and there is the source of where the money is coming from. LIV Golf is being funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund which to all extent and purposes takes money that has been made through oil and natural gas and invests it in a whole raft of businesses including sport. PIF has a stake in Uber, in banks and telecoms giants, in companies that build electric cars, in video gaming giant Blizzard and of course in Newcastle United FC.

And that seems to be a sticking point for many; is it morally and ethically right to sign up to take part in a competition that is being bank rolled by a state which has a dubious record on human rights? Furthermore, Saudi Arabia's PIF has Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as its chairman. A declassified US intelligence report released in February 2021 asserted that Bin Salman was complicit in the killing of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi - an allegation Bin Salman has denied.

For their part, the players taking part are playing a (cricketing) straight bat to questions about the moral decisions that they have made. When quizzed by reporters this week, Phil Mickleson failed to deny that he is set to trouser $200m from being involved. Double major winner Dustin Johnson, meanwhile – who has already won over $70m from career prize money – said that the reported $150m that he is receiving – helped to make the decision “for him and his family”. Ian Poulter refused to answer questions about whether he would take money from Russian President Vladimir Putin if a tournament was held in Russia!

It's easy to judge and say that these players have committed a huge faux pas and read the mood of the room/society very wrong. It’s easy to pillar them for their lack of ethics and their blindness as to the source of their winnings. But, in all honesty, how many of us would do exactly the same were we in their shoes? I remember being astonished when I was younger that a friend of mine quite honestly and truthfully said that, in a hypothetical situation, he would hand in to the police a bag full of untraceable bank notes, rather than keep it for himself. I disagreed with him fervently at the time, but these days my perspectives have changed immeasurably.

Who’s to say that a professional sportsman shouldn’t be on the PIF payroll? Are we to chastise someone for taking an Uber, from supporting Newcastle United or from playing a video game published by Blizzard? If we were all offered a chance to make a life altering amount of money for doing a job that we are qualified to do, would any of us be any different? Aristotle might subscribe to an alternative perspective, but would you?