After becoming the first openly transgender athlete to win an NCAA Division I national championship over two months ago, former Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas responded to criticism that she received throughout the 2021–22 season, saying that she did not transition to gain a competitive advantage.
“The biggest misconception, I think, is the reason I transitioned,” Thomas said in an interview Monday with ABC News and ESPN. “People will say, ‘Oh, she just transitioned so she would have an advantage, so she could win.’ I transitioned to be happy, to be true to myself.”
Thomas, who swam on the Penn men’s swimming team for three seasons, joined the women’s team this year after a gap year. She burst onto the national scene following her performance at the Zippy Invitational in Akron, Ohio, in December 2021, when she posted the nation’s fastest times in the 200-yard freestyle and the 500 free.
“I’m a woman, just like anybody else on the team,” Thomas said in an exclusive interview with SI in January. “I’ve always viewed myself as just a swimmer. It’s what I’ve done for so long; it’s what I love. I get into the water every day and do my best.”
At the NCAA swimming and diving championships in March, Thomas, who declined all interview requests during the event, won the 500 freestyle and placed fifth and eighth, respectively, in the 200 and 100 freestyle.
Thomas’s participation and success on the women’s team drew a mixed reaction from teammates, competitors and other members of the swimming and sporting world throughout the season. Erica Sullivan, a 1,500-meter freestyle silver medalist at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and current freshman at Texas, wrote an op-ed in Newsweek in which she expressed her support for Thomas after competing against her at NCAA championships.
“I have been given a platform to advocate for my community, and I can’t sit silently by as I see a fellow swimmer’s fundamental rights be put up for debate,” Sullivan wrote. “All swimmers embody a diverse set of identities and characteristics. What makes each of us unique also contributes to our success in the pool. Yet no one questions the validity of how cisgender athletes’ unique traits and skills, or who they are, contribute to their success. However, University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas has been unfairly targeted for just that—for being who she is, a transgender woman.”
However, some of Thomas’s biggest detractors came from within her own team. In early February, sixteen members of Penn’s women’s swimming team penned an anonymous letter to Ivy League officials, requesting that Thomas be held out of the conference championship meet.
“We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman. Lia has every right to live her life authentically,” the letter read, per The Washington Post. ”However, we also recognize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone’s gender identity. Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women’s category, as evidenced by her rankings that have bounced from #462 as a male to #1 as a female.
“If she were to be eligible to compete against us, she could now break Penn, Ivy, and NCAA Women’s Swimming records; feats she could never have done as a male athlete.”
Thomas said she had experienced gender dysphoria and stress on her mental health, which led her to transition and begin hormone replacement therapy in May 2019, following her sophomore year.
Before the start of Thomas’s senior season, the NCAA required transgender women to undergo 12 months of hormone therapy to become eligible for competition in the women’s category. When Thomas began her season in November 2021, she’d undergone 30 months of hormone therapy.
“It’s no different than a cis woman taking a spot on a travel team or a scholarship. It’s a part of athletics, where people are competing against each other,” she said. “It’s not taking away opportunities from cis women, really. Trans women are women, so it’s still a woman who is getting that scholarship or that opportunity.”
When asked by ABC News and ESPN whether she would do it all over again, even after all the criticism she has received, Thomas paused before answering.
“I would say yes,” she replied. “I’ve been able to do the sport that I love as my authentic self.”
