UK Sport says it will support the transgender cyclist Emily Bridges with lottery funding in the buildup to the Paris 2024 Olympics if she is allowed to compete in the women’s category. The confirmation by the funding body for British Olympic and Paralympic sport came less than 24 hours after Boris Johnson said he did not believe “biological men should be competing in female sport events”.
The UK Sport chief executive, Sally Munday, said Bridges would be entitled to public funding up to £27,000 a year, plus benefits, if world cycling’s governing body, the UCI, allows her to compete as a woman and praised her “incredible resilience”.
“We will support every or any athlete who a sport or governing body has deemed to have future potential and is eligible to compete,” said Munday. “I have huge empathy for everyone involved in this. I have huge empathy for Emily. I have huge empathy for the women whom she would have been potentially competing against.
“Emily has shown incredible courage, incredible resilience and huge determination. When you are in the centre of something which is of national interest, which this has become, then clearly that creates a pressure and environment on any individual. But this isn’t simply about Emily. This is a much bigger topic.”
Bridges, who set a national junior men’s record over 25 miles in 2018, had hoped to race as a woman for the first time at the British National Omnium Championships last Saturday before she was barred by the UCI, which questioned whether she was eligible.
That ruling came after Bridges’s competitors held talks about boycotting the event in protest against the UCI’s transgender rules that require trans women to lower their testosterone to five nmol/L for a year. The riders believe the current guidelines are insufficient to stop anyone who has been through male puberty having a major advantage in the women’s category, a position supported by Sara Symington, the head of Great Britain’s Olympic cycling programme, who has signed a letter to the UCI calling for a rule change.
Munday said UK Sport had been in regular talks with British Cycling to make sure Bridges was receiving support, along with the riders who threatened a boycott.
“We must not lose sight of the fact that this is much bigger than a single person,” Munday said. “And we have to have these conversations respectfully because humans, human feelings and human experiences are at the centre of this.”
Munday dismissed suggestions that Johnson’s comments on transgender athletes would change the funding template for UK Sport, as it was up to individual sports to decide who was eligible to compete. “What is really important is that we make sure as a sporting industry we are inclusive, that we are welcoming, that we enable everyone who wants to play sport to play sport,” she said.
“Where inclusion bumps up against fairness and safety, it’s down for an individual sport to consider and make the decisions that are most appropriate for that sport.”
Munday was speaking at an event to announce a pilot scheme that aims to give athletes and coaches an independent and confidential way of reporting allegations of bullying, discrimination and abuse in UK Olympic and Paralympic sports. Only four sports have signed up to the Sport Integrity scheme, which will be run by Sport Resolutions, an independent sport-specific dispute resolution service. However, UK Sport is hoping more will do so before it launches next month.
