Cycling in urgent talks with other sports over tougher rules for trans athletes

The president of cycling’s governing body has held emergency talks with other international sports federations about creating tougher new rules for the participation of trans women in elite women’s sport “within months”.

In a notable intervention, the UCI president, David Lappartient, said cycling’s current rules, which allow trans women to compete against cis women if they reduce their testosterone to below 5 nmol/L for a period of 12 months, were “probably not enough” to ensure fair competition.

He also suggested that other sports including athletics and swimming were in a similar boat and that coordinated action might be needed.

“It is a very sensitive topic at the moment,” he said. “The question is, is there a memory from your body from what you were before? Do you have an advantage for this? Do we have a breach of fair competition?

“When you ask this question, it is not to challenge the fact that people want to transition. We fully respect that.

But I can also really understand from ladies [who] say: ‘OK, we don’t accept this.’ At the moment, the union of women’s riders are completely against this and challenging the UCI. So we are in between.”

The participation of trans women in elite sport has become a topical issue with the US swimmer Lia Thomas becoming the first trans athlete to win a national college title a fortnight ago.

Lappartient, meanwhile, said that cycling had “one big case in Great Britain” in the form of trans woman cyclist Emily Bridges, who set a national junior 25-mile record as a man in 2018.

Bridges was hoping to compete in her first race as a woman at the British National Omnium Championships but has since been barred by the UCI as she is still registered as a male competitor.

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